I backed, in order to get round to my proper side of the counter. But, unfortunately, I backed without looking; I stumbled over an empty box and sprawled like a clown into the corner, landing incontinently among bundles of brooms and axe handles.

Never in all my life did I feel so insignificant or so foolish as then.

The very devil himself seemed to have set his picked imps after me; for it was my habit, ordinarily, to be neither dirty as I was then, nor clownish as I must have appeared.

To put it mildly, I was deeply embarra.s.sed, and at a woman, too. Oh!

the degradation of it.

As I rose, I fancied that my ears caught the faintest tinkle of a laugh. I turned my frowning eyes on the young lady, but she was a very owl for inscrutable solemnity. I looked over at the elderly person in the doorway; she was smiling upon me with a most exasperating benignity.

"What kind of business do you run here?" asked the self-possessed young lady.

"Strictly cash, miss,--excepting the Camps and the better cla.s.s of settlers."

"I did not inquire _how_ you ran your business, but what kind of business you ran," she retorted icily. "Of course,--we shall pay as we purchase."

I was hastening from bad to worse. I could have bitten my tongue out or kicked myself. With a tremendous effort, I pulled myself together and a.s.sumed as much dignity as was possible in my badly ruffled internal and external condition.

"Are there any men about the place?" she asked, changing the subject with disconcerting suddenness.

I flushed slightly at the taunt.

"N-no! miss," I replied, in my best shop-keeper tone, "sorry,--but we are completely out of them."

She must have detected the flavour of sarcasm, for her lips relaxed for the briefest moment, and a smile was born which showed two rows of even white teeth. I ventured a smile in return, but it proved a sorry and an unfortunate one, for it killed hers ruthlessly and right at the second of its birth, too.

I almost waited for her to tell me I was "too fresh," but she did not do so. She had a more telling way. She simply wilted me with a silent reserve that there was no combating.

Only on one or two occasions had I encountered that particular shade of reserve that adjusts everything around to its proper sphere and level without hurting, and it was always in elderly, aristocratic, British d.u.c.h.esses; never in a young lady with golden hair and eyes,--well! at that time, I could not tell the colour of her eyes, but there was something in them that completed a combination that I seemed to have been hunting for all my life and had never been able to find.

"Mr. Store-keeper," she commenced again.

I felt like tearing my hair and crying aloud. "Mr. Store-keeper,"

forsooth.

"You appear anxious to misconstrue me. Let me explain,--please."

I bowed contritely. What else could I do?

"This afternoon, I have a piano,--boxed,--coming by the steamer _Siwash_. I would like if you could find me some a.s.sistance to get it ash.o.r.e and placed in my house."

She said it so easily and it sounded so simple. But what a poser it was! Bring a full-fledged piano from a steamer three hundred yards out in the Bay, land it and place it in a house on the top of a rock.

Heaven help the piano! I thought, as I gaped at her in bewilderment.

"Oh!--of course," she put in hurriedly, toying with the chain of her silver purse,--"if you are afraid to tackle it, why!--I'll--we shall do it ourselves."

She turned on her heel.

She looked so determined that I had not the least doubt but that she would have a go at it anyway.

"Not at all,--not at all. It will be a pleasure,--I am sure," I said quickly, as if I had been reared all my life on piano-moving.

She turned and smiled; a real, full-grown, able-bodied, entrancing, mischievous smile, and all of it full on the dirty, grimy individual,--me.

"It does not happen to be the kind of piano one can take to pieces, Miss Grant, is it?" I asked.

"It is," she answered, "but that one might not be able to put it together again."

It was another bull's eye for the lady.

She went on. "I have never received a piano,--knocked down."

Something inside of me sn.i.g.g.e.red at the phrase, for it was purely a business one. But I was too busy just then figuring the ins and outs of the matter to give way to any hilarity.

"Thanks so much! What a relief!" she sighed, with a nod to her silent companion, who nodded in return.

"Oh!--may I have five cents' worth of pins,--Mister, Mister----"

"Mr. Bremner," I added.

"Thank you!"

"Hair pins, hat pins, safety pins or clothes pins?" I queried.

"Just pins,--with points and heads on them,--if you don't mind."

I bowed ceremoniously.

"We shall be over this afternoon, when we have made a list of the supplies we require," she went on.

As I hunted for the pins, she began to look in her purse for a five cent piece.

"Oh!--never mind," I said; "I can charge these to your bill in the afternoon."

"No! thank you," she replied, airily and lightly;--oh! so very, very airily that I would not have been surprised had she flown away.

"Your terms are strictly cash;--I would not disturb your business routine for worlds."

As I held out the package to her, I stopped and, for the first time, I felt really at ease and equal to her.

"Possibly you would prefer that I send this package round by the delivery wagon?" I said.

She picked the paper package from between my fingers and her chin went into the air at a most dangerous elevation, while her eyelids closed over her eyes, allowing long, golden-brown lashes to brush her cheeks.

Then, without a word, she turned her back on me and pa.s.sed through the doorway with her companion, or chaperon, or aunt, or whatever relation to her the elderly lady might be.

"So foolish!" I heard her exclaim, under her breath, then she went over something on her fingers to the elderly lady, who laughed and started in to talk volubly.

The mystery of that madam's benign smile solved itself: she was evidently talkative enough, but she was as deaf as a wooden block and used her smile to cover her deficiency.