Sparrows: The Story of an Unprotected GirlNewte, Horace W. C. (Horace Wykeham Can)
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Sparrows: The Story of an Unprotected Girl
Newte, Horace W. C. (Horace Wykeham Can)
London (England) -- Fiction
Often, while busily engaged in serving customers or in hearing and
seeing things which, before she came to "Dawes'," she would never have
believed to be possible, she had a strong suspicion that old Orgles was
watching her from the top of a flight of stairs or the tiny window in
his room; it seemed that he was a wary old spider, she a fly, and that
he was biding his time. This impression saddened her; it also made her
attend carefully to her duties, it being his place to deal with those
of the staff who were remiss in their work. It was only of an evening,
when she was free of the shop, that she could be said to be anything
like her old, light-hearted self. She would wash, change her clothes,
and scurry off to a ham and beef warehouse she had discovered in a
turning off Oxford Street, where she would get her supper. The shop was
kept by a man named Siggers. He was an affected little man, who wore
his hair long; he minced about his shop and sliced his ham and beef
with elaborate wavings of his carving knife and fork. Mavis proving a
regular customer, he let her eat her supper in the shop, providing her
with knife, fork, tablecloth, and mustard. Although married and
henpecked, he affected to admire Mavis; while she ate her humble meal,
he would forlornly look in her direction, sigh, and wearily support his
shaggy head with his forefinger; but she could not help noticing that,
when afflicted with this mood, he would often glance at himself in a
large looking glass which faced him as he sat. His demonstrations of
regard never became more pronounced. It was as much as Mavis could do
to stop herself from laughing outright when she paid him, it being a
signal mark of his confidence that he did not exact payment from her
"on delivery of goods in order to prevent regrettable mistakes," as
printed cards, conspicuously placed in the shop, informed customers--or
clients, as Mr Siggers preferred to call them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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