Many of them even her mother would have called well born, and one and all, they were almost painfully ladylike.

With their thin, erect figures, their wan, colourless faces, their graying hair, and their sweet Southern voices, they imparted a delicate social air to the shop.
Usually Gabriella stopped to talk to the girls who crowded in from the workroom, brushing shreds of silk or ribbon from their skirts, but to-day her mind wandered while she answered Miss Nash, and when, a minute later, Miss Lancaster spoke to her on her way out, and asked her to match the flowers for Florrie's hat, she was obliged to make an effort before she could recall her roving attention.

She was thinking not of Florrie's hat, but of Mrs.Spencer's words, "He has come back because he heard that your engagement was broken." And at the first insurgent rise of emotion, she ceased to be the business woman and became merely an imaginative girl, dreaming of love.
"They aren't quite the right shade, are they ?" she asked with an uncertainty which was tactful rather than sincere, "or, perhaps, the ribbon might be darker ?" Her eyes questioned Miss Lancaster, who moved a step nearer the window as she held the bolt of ribbon toward the daylight.
"Well, we'd better look at it again in the morning.

You are in a hurry, Miss Carr ?" "Oh, no, I've all the time in the world," answered Gabriella, though she longed to be out with the June scents and her dreams, "but I am sure the ribbon ought to be a deeper blue to tone with the ragged robins." "You've a wonderful eye for colour, that's why I ask your advice," said the other, and a sudden friendliness shone in her tired eyes, for she had liked Gabriella from the beginning.

That the girl possessed a genuine gift of taste, the elder woman had already discovered.