"One of them will do for Ruth Colson; she is going out to the Malay States, and a sunshade will always be useful there. And I must get her some thin writing paper. It takes up no room in one's baggage."Mrs. Chemping bought stacks of writing paper; it was so cheap, and it went so flat in a trunk or portmanteau.
She also bought a few envelopes - envelopes somehow seemed rather an extragavance compared with notepaper.
"Do you think Ruth will like blue or grey paper?"she asked Cyprian.
"Grey," said Cyprian, who had never met the lady in question.
"Have you any mauve notepaper of this quality?"Adela asked the assistant.
"We haven't any mauve," said the assistant, "but we've two shades of green and a darker shade of grey."Mrs. Chemping inspected the greens and the darker grey, and chose the blue.
"Now we can have some lunch," she said.
Cyprian behaved in an exemplary fashion in the refreshment department, and cheerfully accepted a fish cake and a mince pie and a small cup of coffee as adequate restoratives after two hours of concentrated shopping. He was adamant, however, in resisting his aunt's suggestion that a hat should be bought for him at the counter where men's headwear was being disposed of at temptingly reduced prices.
"I've got as many hats as I want at home," he said, "and besides, it rumples one's hair so, trying them on."Perhaps he was going to develop into a Nut after all. It was a disquieting symptom that he left all the parcels in charge of the cloak-room attendant.
"We shall be getting more parcels presently," he said, "so we need not collect these till we have finished our shopping."His aunt was doubtfully appeased; some of the pleasure and excitement of a shopping expedition seemed to evaporate when one was deprived of immediate personal contact with one's purchases.
"I'm going to look at those napkins again," she said, as they descended the stairs to the ground floor.
"You need not come," she added, as the dreaming look in the boy's eyes changed for a moment into one of mute protest, "you can meet me afterwards in the cutlery department; I've just remembered that I haven't a corkscrew in the house that can be depended on."Cyprian was not to be found in the cutlery department when his aunt in due course arrived there, but in the crush and bustle of anxious shoppers and busy attendants it was an easy matter to miss anyone. It was in the leather goods department some quarter of an hour later that Adela Chemping caught sight of her nephew, separated from her by a rampart of suit-cases and portmanteaux and hemmed in by the jostling crush of human beings that now invaded every corner of the great shopping emporium. She was just in time to witness a pardonable but rather embarrassing mistake on the part of a lady who had wriggled her way with unstayable determination towards the bareheaded Cyprian, and was now breathlessly demanding the sale price of a handbag which had taken her fancy.
"There now," exclaimed Adela to herself, "she takes him for one of the shop assistants because he hasn't got a hat on. I wonder it hasn't happened before."Perhaps it had. Cyprian, at any rate, seemed neither startled nor embarrassed by the error into which the good lady had fallen. Examining the ticket on the bag, he announced in a clear, dispassionate voice:
"Black seal, thirty-four shillings, marked down to twenty-eight. As a matter of fact, we are clearing them out at a special reduction price of twenty-six shillings.
They are going off rather fast."
"I'll take it," said the lady, eagerly digging some coins out of her purse.
"Will you take it as it is?" asked Cyprian; "it will be a matter of a few minutes to get it wrapped up, there is such a crush.""Never mind, I'll take it as it is," said the purchaser, clutching her treasure and counting the money into Cyprian's palm.
Several kind strangers helped Adela into the open air.
"It's the crush and the heat," said one sympathiser to another; "it's enough to turn anyone giddy."When she next came across Cyprian he was standing in the crowd that pushed and jostled around the counters of the book department. The dream look was deeper than ever in his eyes. He had just sold two books of devotion to an elderly Canon.
