"Think over what I've said, ma'am. Words of wisdom you've heard, and every one of 'em for your good. And see that your young man carries out my suggestion for the window to-morrow, will you? Miss Bessie upstairs?"
Mrs. Day, staring into the street through her tears, said she believed her daughter was in the sitting-room.
"I'll just run up and pay my respects to Miss Bessie, then."
He had adopted the habit, of late, of going up to pay his respects in that quarter after every business interview in the shop. Bessie pretended to look upon the predilection for her society as presumption on George Boult's part.
"A man as old as my own father!" she often said to Emily, with whom she had many confidences.
"All the more reason for him to come fascinatin' round you," Emily declared.
How this ill-favoured, more than middle-aged spinster came to be an authority on affairs of the heart she would have found it difficult to explain; but she had ever an opinion to offer on such matters, and she gave it with a weightiness and a conclusiveness which rendered it final.
"It's when they gets past the time that females is likely to cast an eye to them that they're dangerous--so madly are they then overcome with love," she asserted.
"I don't think old Scrooge will ever be dangerous," Bessie regretfully demurred. She was much interested. "What do you mean by 'dangerous,' Emily?"
Emily would not descend to detail. She nodded a wise head. "You look out!" she counselled. "And remember, Miss Bessie, I'm always at hand when he's near."
The idea that the elderly draper might suddenly become riotous, gave always a zest to the _tête-à-tête_ which otherwise it might have lacked. She was, truth to tell, a little disappointed to find him after each visit no more alarming than he had been before. She even tried to pique him into an exhibition of the "dangerous" symptom, treating him with the caprice and the disdain she dared not have shown but for Emily's repeated assurance she could play as she liked with him and he would never take offence. The mother, Deleah, even little Franky, had to mind their "P's and Q's" with the man who, as he himself had phrased it, "stood at the back of them." Bessie was on a different plane, she told herself, and could do as she liked.