A Sleeping Memory (1902) (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

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Excerpt from A Sleeping Memory
The customers of the establishment were obviously of sporting tastes, and addicted to the diversions of the well-to-do. There were yachting jackets and shooting capes, driving cloaks, and - in a little window all to themselves - opera wraps! Everything was marvellously cheap. There were notes of exclamation following the prices. There were rows of electric lights to enhance the brilliancy of jet trimmings and steel buttons. Truly the place should have been a feminine Paradise.
Yet of all this magnificence there were but two spectators - two girls huddled together under one umbrella. The younger, large-eyed, anaemic, untidy, looked and spoke of what she saw with eager and strenuous toleration - a toleration which at times was merged into enthusiasm. Her companion, who was taller, and who held herself with a distinction which was oddly at variance with her shabby clothes, never attempted to conceal her contempt for this tinselly array of self-styled Paris models and cheap reproductions from the inner world of fashion. And indeed she seemed scarcely the sort of person for ready-made garments.
The younger girl's interest was apparently impersonal. She was essaying the part of a feminine Mephistopheles.
"I say, Eleanor, I think that one's quite stunning," she declared, pointing suddenly at one of the most atrocious of the models. "It's smart, ain't it? There was a lady came to the shop yesterday wearing one just like it. I declare you couldn't tell 'em apart. She was a lady too - really. She came in a carriage, and she had a little dog, and a real gold muff-chain, with funny little stones set in it - not one of them imitation things.