Clementina ignored him. “Mr. Atwell wants to see you a moment, Mr. Fane,” she said to the clerk. “All right, Miss Claxon,” Fane answered, with the sorrowful respect which he always showed Clementina, now, “I'll be right there.” But he waited a moment, either in expression of his personal independence, or from curiosity to know what the shoeman was going to say of the bronze slippers. Clementina felt the fascination, too; she thought the slippers were beautiful, and her foot thrilled with a mysterious prescience of its fitness for them. “Now, the'e, ladies, or as I may say guls, if you'll excuse it in one that's moa like a fatha to you than anything else, in his feelings”--the girls tittered, and some one shouted derisively--“It's true!”--“now there is a shoe, or call it a slippa, that I've rutha hesitated about showin' to you, because I know that you're all rutha serious-minded, I don't ca'e how young ye be, or how good-lookin' ye be; and I don't presume the'e's one among you that's eve' head o' dancin'.” In the mirthful hooting and mocking that followed, the shoeman hedged gravely from the extreme position he had taken. “What? Well, maybe you have among some the summa folks, but we all know what summa folks ah', and I don't expect you to patte'n by them. But what I will say is that if any young lady within the sound of my voice,”--he looked round for the applause which did not fail him in his parody of the pulpit style--“should get an invitation to a dance next winta, and should feel it a wo'k of a charity to the young man to go, she'll be sorry--on his account, rememba--that she ha'n't got this pair o' slippas. “The'a! They're a numba two, and they'll fit any lady here, I don't ca'e how small a foot she's got. Don't all speak at once, sistas! Ample time allowed for meals. That's a custom-made shoe, and if it hadn't b'en too small for the lady they was oddid foh, you couldn't-'a' got 'em for less than seven dollas; but now I'm throwin' on 'em away for three.” A groan of dismay went up from the whole circle, and some who had pressed forward for a sight of the slippers, shrank back again. “Did I hea' just now,” asked the shoeman, with a soft insinuation in his voice, and in the glance he suddenly turned upon Clementina, “a party addressed as Boss?” Clementina flushed, but she did not cower; the chef walked away with a laugh, and the shoeman pursued him with his voice. “Not that I am goin' to folla the wicked example of a man who tries to make spot of young ladies; but if the young lady addressed as Boss--” “Miss Claxon,” said the clerk with ingratiating reverence.