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A pretty shop-girl on the Faubourg du Roule, whose beautiful eyes, as he, himself, expressed it, had pierced his heart from end to end, consented, though she was much his junior, to a union of their destinies. In 1789 the newly married couple purchased the stock of a wine-shop, over the door of which, after the 10th of August, they prudently hung the sign of the "Bonnet Rouge."
Let us take, for example, a woman whose relative navetete makes the process clearly apparent, to wit, a simple shop-girl. Her absolute first choice, perhaps, is not a living man at all, but a supernatural abstraction in a book, say, one of the heroes of Hall Caine, Ethel M. Dell, or Marie Corelli. After him comes a moving-picture actor. Then another moving-picture actor.
Not that Mavis spent her money, shop-girl fashion, in buying cheap flummery which was, at best, a poor and easily recognisable imitation of the real thing; her purchases were of the kind that any young gentlewoman, who was not compelled to take thought for the morrow, might becomingly wear.
That was why, as a sort of compromise, she cut herself a fringe and began to frizz out the end of her plait. Her father stared at her, and said she looked like a shop-girl, when first he noticed it, and Esther told her she was a stupid child; but the looking-glass and Aldith reassured her. The next thing was surreptitiously to lengthen her dresses, which were at the short-long stage.
Their faces had merely the conventional Yankee sharpness and wanness of feature, and such difference of air and character as should say for one and another, shop-girl, shoe-binder, seamstress; and it seemed an absurdity and an injustice to refer to them in any way the disclosures of the ruthlessly scant drapery.
So he never had forgotten her. On this occasion above all, when Sidonie arrived at Savigny after her long absence, with her fluffy hair, her graceful figure, her bright, mobile face, the whole effect emphasized by mannerisms suggestive of the shop-girl, she produced a decided sensation.
Accordingly, she smiled encouragingly upon Don Miguel, and before they set out on their homeward ride she had vouchsafed him the bliss of knowing that he might call her his. The general, as her guardian, did not withhold his approval; but when Grace drew him aside and besought him never to reveal to her intended the fact that she had once been a shop-girl, the old warrior smiled.
She retained the manners of a shop-girl. Her slightly artificial amiability, sometimes too humble, was as unpleasant as the spurious elegance of the shop; and her disdainful attitudes recalled the superb airs of the head saleswomen in the great dry-goods establishments, arrayed in black silk gowns, which they take off in the dressing-room when they go away at night who stare with an imposing air, from the vantage-point of their mountains of curls, at the poor creatures who venture to discuss prices.
It appears that Eden did not see her to the omnibus, but walked home with her last evening. He spoke of her this morning, and though he assumed an indifferent tone, it was plain to see that he was very much surprised to find a shop-girl from Regent Street visiting and on terms of equality with my wife." Constance reddened. "How came your friend to know that she was a shopgirl in Regent Street?"
From the humblest shop-girl to the greatest lady, there is apparent an intention to be beautiful, sweet maid, and let who will be hum-drum, at whatever cost, by whatever means. This, of course, at all periods, has been woman's chief thought, but till recently, in our times, she has more or less affected a certain secrecy in her intention.
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