"Blouses" pulsed with excitement. Miss Ena Rolls and her brother were
said to be "showing their father's shop to an English lord." How the
thrilling tale began to go the rounds nobody in "Blouses" could tell.
But whenever any famous personage--a millionaire's daughter or an
actress, a society beauty or the heroine of a fashionable
scandal--enters a big department store, the news of her advent runs
from counter to counter like wildfire. In some shops the appearance of
an Astor, a Vanderbilt, or a Princess Patricia would send up the
mercury of excitement forty degrees higher than that of a Miss or Mr.
Rolls. But at the Hands, Peter the Great's son and daughter would have
drawn all eyes from the reigning Czar and Czarina of Russia.
It was rumoured that they had lunched early in the Pompeian
restaurant. The waitress who had served them had not known until too
late. She would regret this all her life. Mr. Michaels, of
"Jewellery," who had been honoured by showing them pearls, was envied
by all his fellows, and the same with Miss Dick, of "Candy," and Miss
Wallace, in "Perfume." Girls in all departments grew quite jumpy in
expectation that the party might appear, and under the intense nervous
strain of trying to recognize them in time.
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