One day not so long after Clyde’s discovery of his sister Esta, Hortense, walking along Baltimore Street near its junction with Fifteenth — the smartest portion of the shopping section of the city — at the noon hour — with Doris Trine, another shop girl in her department store, saw in the window of one of the smaller and less exclusive fur stores of the city, a fur jacket of beaver that to her, viewed from the eye-point of her own particular build, coloring and temperament, was exactly what she needed to strengthen mightily her very limited personal wardrobe.
It was not such an expensive coat, worth possibly a hundred dollars — but fashioned in such an individual way as to cause her to imagine that, once invested with it, her own physical charm would register more than it ever had.
Moved by this thought, she paused and exclaimed:
“Oh, isn’t that just the classiest, darlingest little coat you ever saw!
Oh, do look at those sleeves, Doris.”
She clutched her companion violently by the arm.
“Lookit the collar.
And the lining!
And those pockets!
Oh, dear!”
She fairly vibrated with the intensity of her approval and delight.
“Oh, isn’t that just too sweet for words?
And the very kind of coat I’ve been thinking of since I don’t know when.
Oh, you pity sing!” she exclaimed, affectedly, thinking all at once as much of her own pose before the window and its effect on the passer-by as of the coat before her.
“Oh, if I could only have ‘oo.”
She clapped her hands admiringly, while Isadore Rubenstein, the elderly son of the proprietor, who was standing somewhat out of the range of her gaze at the moment, noted the gesture and her enthusiasm and decided forthwith that the coat must be worth at least twenty-five or fifty dollars more to her, anyhow, in case she inquired for it.
The firm had been offering it at one hundred.
“Oh, ha!” he grunted.
But being of a sensual and somewhat romantic turn, he also speculated to himself rather definitely as to the probable trading value, affectionally speaking, of such a coat.
What, say, would the poverty and vanity of such a pretty girl as this cause her to yield for such a coat?
In the meantime, however, Hortense, having gloated as long as her noontime hour would permit, had gone away, still dreaming and satiating her flaming vanity by thinking of how devastating she would look in such a coat.
But she had not stopped to ask the price.
Hence, the next day, feeling that she must look at it once more, she returned, only this time alone, and yet with no idea of being able to purchase it herself.
On the contrary, she was only vaguely revolving the problem of how, assuming that the coat was sufficiently low in price, she could get it. At the moment she could think of no one.
But seeing the coat once more, and also seeing Mr. Rubenstein, Jr., inside eyeing her in a most propitiatory and genial manner, she finally ventured in.
“You like the coat, eh?” was Rubenstein’s ingratiating comment as she opened the door.
“Well, that shows you have good taste, I’ll say.
That’s one of the nobbiest little coats we’ve ever had to show in this store yet.
A real beauty, that.
And how it would look on such a beautiful girl as you!”
He took it out of the window and held it up.
“I seen you when you was looking at it yesterday.”
A gleam of greedy admiration was in his eye.
And noting this, and feeling that a remote and yet not wholly unfriendly air would win her more consideration and courtesy than a more intimate one, Hortense merely said,
“Yes?”
“Yes, indeed.
And I said right away, there’s a girl that knows a really swell coat when she sees it.”
The flattering unction soothed, in spite of herself.
“Look at that! Look at that!” went on Mr. Rubinstein, turning the coat about and holding it before her.
“Where in Kansas City will you find anything to equal that today?
Look at this silk lining here — genuine Mallinson silk — and these slant pockets.
And the buttons.
You think those things don’t make a different-looking coat?
There ain’t another one like it in Kansas City today — not one.
And there won’t be.
We designed it ourselves and we never repeat our models.
We protect our customers.
But come back here.” (He led the way to a triple mirror at the back.)
“It takes the right person to wear a coat like this — to get the best effect out of it.
Let me try it on you.”