He was getting very familiar, and Eloise was chatting with him on the most friendly terms, when Howard came back with a cup of chocolate, a part of which was spilled before he reached her.  Howard knew who the young blackguard was, and glowered at him disapprovingly, but Eloise said, “Mr. Crompton, this is Thomas Walker, one of my biggest scholars that is to be.  Some difference in our height, isn’t there? but we shall get on famously.  I like big boys and taught a lot of them in Mayville.”

She smiled up at Tom and gave him her empty cup to take away.  He would have stood on his head if she had asked him to, and he hurried off with the cup, meeting Jack, who had cooled himself, bought a pound of candy at one table and some flowers at another, and was making his way back to Eloise.  He had also looked round a little for the apron he was going to buy, but could not find it.  He’d make another tour of inspection later, he thought, for he meant to have it, if it were still there.  Taking his stand on one side of Eloise’s chair while Howard stood on the other, the three made a striking tableau at which many looked admiringly, commenting upon the beauty of the young girl,—­the kind, good-humored face of Jack, and the haughty bearing of Howard, who, an aristocrat to his finger tips, watched the proceedings with an undisguised look of contempt showing itself in his sarcastic smile and the expression of his eyes.

Eloise was greatly interested and so expressed herself.  She had seen the scrub woman haggling with Ruby Ann over the brown and white spotted wrapper, and had seen it laid aside until another customer came, when the same haggling took place with the same result, for Mrs. Biggs, who darted in and out, still clung to the price put upon it and so retarded the sale.  The last time Ruby Ann brought it out Howard and Jack both recognized it.

“By Jove!  I’ve half a mind to buy it myself as a kind of souvenir,” Jack said, but a look of disgust in Eloise’s face and a frown on Howard’s deterred him, and he kept very quiet for a while, wondering where that apron was and if by any possibility it could have been sold.

The box of articles which Jack’s sister had sent from New York had been sold early in the day, and Amy’s dresses had not been opened.  Nearly everything of any value was gone.  Two of Howard’s neckties still remained conspicuously near the young men, who watched Tom Walker as he examined them very critically, and they heard the saleswoman say, “They belonged to Mr. Howard Crompton.  They say he has dozens of them and all first-class.  This suits you admirably,”—­and she held up a white satin one with a faint tinge of blue.