at liberty. Would she kindly take a seat and wait, or would she prefer to have a look about the galleries while some one went off to see if he could see her at once or a little later on? She liked all this. And she would wander about the luxurious rooms of the establishment of Pickett, Inc., content to stare languidly at other and less influential patrons who had to be satisfied with the smug attentions of ordinary salesmen.
And Moody, being acutely English, laid it on very thick when it came to dealing with persons of the type of Mrs. Smith-Parvis. Somehow he had learned that in dealing with snobs one must transcend even in snobbishness. The only way to command the respect of a snob is to go him a little better,—indeed, according to Moody, it isn't altogether out of place to go him a great deal better. The loftier the snob, the higher you must shoot to get over his head (to quote Moody, whose training as a footman in one of the oldest houses in England had prepared him against almost any emergency). He assumed on occasion a polite, bored indifference that seldom failed to have the desired effect. In fact, he frequently went so far as to pretend to stifle a yawn while face to face with the most exalted of patrons,—a revelation of courage which, being carefully timed, usually put the patron in a corner from which she could escape only by paying a heavy ransom.
He sometimes had a way of implying,—by his manner, of course,—that he would rather not sell the treasure at all than to have it go into your mansion, where it would be manifestly alone in its splendour, notwithstanding the priceless articles you had picked up elsewhere in previous efforts to inhabit the place with glory.
