He was clearly the master, and devoted to his business--the essence of which, in his conception, might precisely have been this particular secret that he possessed for worrying the customer so little that it fairly made for their relations a sort of solemnity.

He had not many things, none of the redundancy of "rot" they had elsewhere seen, and our friends had, on entering, even had the sense of a muster so scant that, as high values obviously wouldn't reign, the effect might be almost pitiful.

Then their impression had changed; for, though the show was of small pieces, several taken from the little window and others extracted from a cupboard behind the counter--dusky, in the rather low-browed place, despite its glass doors--each bid for their attention spoke, however modestly, for itself, and the pitch of their entertainer's pretensions was promptly enough given.

His array was heterogeneous and not at all imposing; still, it differed agreeably from what they had hitherto seen.
Charlotte, after the incident, was to be full of impressions, of several of which, later on, she gave her companion--always in the interest of their amusement--the benefit; and one of the impressions had been that the man himself was the greatest curiosity they had looked at.

The Prince was to reply to this that he himself hadn't looked at him; as, precisely, in the general connection, Charlotte had more than once, from other days, noted, for his advantage, her consciousness of how, below a certain social plane, he never SAW.