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"He learns a lot here by lookin' on, an' she tells him the rest at Mosman in the pale moonlight. If I won a sweep, I'd take a few lessons meself an' cut him out." He became aware that Miss Giltinan was standing behind him, and raised his voice.
He looked round, and was surprised to see Miss Giltinan, head of the ladies' department, her lips tight with anger, replacing a heap of cardboard boxes with jerks of suppressed fury. She was his best saleswoman, gathered in from the pavement a week after she had been ejected from Packard's factory for cheeking the boss.
The shopman slinked away without a word. Miss Giltinan was annoyed. It was not the first time that she had heard these scandalous rumours, for the shop was alive with whispers, some professing to know every detail of the meetings between Jonah and the music-teacher, naming to a minute the boat they caught on their return from Mosman.
"I was tellin' Harris that the price of these bluchers ought to be marked down; they're beginning to sweat," he explained, turning to Miss Giltinan and showing her some small spots like treacle on the uppers. "Mr Jones doesn't pay you good money to talk behind his back; and if you take the trouble to look at the tag, you'll see those boots have already been marked down," she replied indignantly.
For some moments there was a dreadful silence, in which Jonah distinctly heard Miss Giltinan giving an order downstairs. Slowly he looked from Clara to the bottle. Again he stared at the frightened woman, and his mind leapt to a dreadful certainty. "Come in, an' shut the door," he said. His voice was little more than a whisper. Clara obeyed him mechanically.
And he waited impatiently for these stolen moments, with a secret desire to see her beneath his roof in a domestic setting that gave him a keener sense of intimacy than the swish of waters and wide spaces of sea and sky. But to-day she looked in vain, and Miss Giltinan, seeing the swift look of inquiry, stepped up to her.
"No, I can do them at the same price as Kling & Wessel's," said Jonah. Miss Giltinan started and looked sharply from Jonah to his customer. She knew that was impossible. And she looked with a frown at this woman who could make Jonah forget his business instincts for a minute.
A crowd of customers jostled one another as they passed in and out; the coins clinked merrily in the till. Miss Giltinan caught sight of her face, and wondered. Hearing nothing, she opened the door, with her heart in her mouth, and looked in. Jonah was crouching motionless on the end of the sofa, his head buried among the cushions, like a stricken animal.
"Who advised you to do that?" said Clara, with an angry flush. "Well, Johnson's been complainin' of overwork fer some time, but Miss Giltinan decided me. She's very keen on me openin' up branches in the suburbs." "You place great weight on Miss Giltinan's opinion," said Clara, jealously. "Ter tell the truth, I do," said Jonah.
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