"Her ladyship's slenderness is a great advantage," said the wisely inciting ones."There is no such advantage as delicacy of line."Summing up the character of their customer with the sales-woman's eye, they realised the discretion of turning to Miss Vanderpoel for encouragement, though she was the younger of the two, and bore no title.They were aware of the existence of persons of rank who were not lavish patrons, but the name of Vanderpoel held most promising suggestions.To an English shopkeeper the American has, of late years, represented the spender--the type which, whatsoever its rank and resources, has, mysteriously, always money to hand over counters in exchange for things it chances to desire to possess.Each year surges across the Atlantic a horde of these fortunate persons, who, to the sober, commercial British mind, appear to be free to devote their existences to travel and expenditure.This contingent appears shopping in the various shopping thoroughfares; it buys clothes, jewels, miscellaneous attractive things, making its purchases of articles useful or decorative with a freedom from anxiety in its enjoyment which does not mark the mood of the ordinary shopper.In the everyday purchaser one is accustomed to take for granted, as a factor in his expenditure, a certain deliberation and uncertainty; to the travelling American in Europe, shopping appears to be part of the holiday which is being made the most of.Surely, all the neat, smart young persons who buy frocks and blouses, hats and coats, hosiery and chains, cannot be the possessors of large incomes;there must be, even in America, a middle class of middle-class resources, yet these young persons, male and female, and most frequently unaccompanied by older persons--seeing what they want, greet it with expressions of pleasure, waste no time in appropriating and paying for it, and go away as in relief and triumph--not as in that sober joy which is clouded by afterthought.Thesalespeople are sometimes even vaguely cheered by their gay lack of any doubt as to the wisdom of their getting what theyadmire, and rejoicing in it.If America always buys in this holiday mood, it must be an enviable thing to be a shopkeeper in their New York or Boston or San Francisco.Who would not make a fortune among them? They want what they want, and not something which seems to them less desirable, but they open their purses and--frequently with some amused uncertainty as to the differences between sovereigns and half-sovereigns, florins and half-crowns--they pay their bills with something almost like glee.They are remarkably prompt about bills --which is an excellent thing, as they are nearly always just going somewhere else, to France or Germany or Italy or Scotland or Siberia.Those of us who are shopkeepers, or their salesmen, do not dream that some of them have incomes no larger than our own, that they work for their livings, that they are teachers journalists, small writers or illustrators of papers or magazines that they are unimportant soldiers of fortune, but, with their queer American insistence on exploration, and the ignoring of limitations, they have, somehow, managed to make this exultant dash for a few daring weeks or months of freedom and new experience.If we knew this, we should regard them from our conservative standpoint of provident decorum as improvident lunatics, being ourselves unable to calculate with their odd courage and their cheerful belief in themselves.What we do know is that they spend, and we are far from disdaining their patronage, though most of them have an odd little familiarity of address and are not stamped with that distinction which causes us to realise the enormous difference between the patron and the tradesman, and makes us feel the worm we remotely like to feel ourselves, though we would not for worlds acknowledge the fact.Mentally, and in our speech, both among our equals and our superiors, we condescend to and patronise them a little, though that, of course, is the fine old insular attitude it would be un-British to discourage.But, if we are not in the least definite concerning the position and resources of these spenders as a mass, we are quite sure of a select number.There is mention of them in the newspapers, of the town houses, the castles, moors, and salmon fishings they rent, of their yachts, their presentations actually at our own courts, of their presence at great balls, at Ascot and Goodwood, at the opera on gala nights.One staggers sometimes before the public summing-up of the amount of their fortunes.These people who have neither blood nor rank, these men who labour in their business offices, are richer than our great dukes, at the realising of whose wealth and possessions we have at times almost turned pale.
"Them!" chaffed a costermonger over his barrow."Blimme, if some o' them blokes won't buy Buckin'am Pallis an' the 'ole R'yal Fambly some mornin' when they're out shoppin'."The subservient attendants in more than one fashionable shop Betty and her sister visit, know that Miss Vanderpoel is of the circle, though her father has not as yet bought or hired any great estate, and his daughter has not been seen in London.
"Its queer we've never heard of her being presented," one shopgirl says to another."Just you look at her."She evidently knows what her ladyship ought to buy--what can be trusted not to overpower her faded fragility.The saleswomen, even if they had not been devoured by alert curiosity, could not have avoided seeing that her ladyship did not seem to know what should be bought, and that Miss Vanderpoel did, though she did not direct her sister's selection, but merely seemed to suggest with delicate restraint.Her taste was wonderfully perceptive.The things bought were exquisite, but a little colourless woman could wear them all with advantage to her restrictions of type.