"You need not come," she added, as the
dreaming look in the boy's eyes changed for a moment into one of mute
protest, "you can meet me afterwards in the cutlery department; I've just
remembered that I haven't a corkscrew in the house that can be depended
on."
Cyprian was not to be found in the cutlery department when his aunt in
due course arrived there, but in the crush and bustle of anxious shoppers
and busy attendants it was an easy matter to miss anyone. It was in the
leather goods department some quarter of an hour later that Adela
Chemping caught sight of her nephew, separated from her by a rampart of
suit-cases and portmanteaux and hemmed in by the jostling crush of human
beings that now invaded every corner of the great shopping emporium. She
was just in time to witness a pardonable but rather embarrassing mistake
on the part of a lady who had wriggled her way with unstayable
determination towards the bareheaded Cyprian, and was now breathlessly
demanding the sale price of a handbag which had taken her fancy.
"There now," exclaimed Adela to herself, "she takes him for one of the
shop assistants because he hasn't got a hat on. I wonder it hasn't
happened before."
Perhaps it had. Cyprian, at any rate, seemed neither startled nor
embarrassed by the error into which the good lady had fallen. Examining
the ticket on the bag, he announced in a clear, dispassionate voice:
"Black seal, thirty-four shillings, marked down to twenty-eight.
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