Original 'Certainly, moddam! Will you take a seat, moddam? Something quite simple I think you said, moddam, and in muslin. I'll be with you in one moment, moddam.' And the young woman crawled away with the negligence that became the dearest place. After an appreciable time she returned with her arms full of what they used to call, so very correctly, 'furbelows,' in spotted and flowered muslins. 'Dearie me!' said Lady Torquilin. 'That's precisely what I wore when I was a girl!' 'Yes, moddam!' said the young woman, condescending to the ghost of a smile. 'The old styles are all comin' in again'--at which burst of responsiveness she suddenly brought herself up sharply, and assumed a manner which forbade you to presume upon it. I picked up one of the garlanded muslins and asked the price of it. It had three frills round the bottom and various irrelevant ribbon-bows. 'Certainly, moddam! One moment, moddam!' as she looked at the ticket attached. 'This one is seventeen guineas, moddam. Silk foundation. A Paris model, moddam, but I dare say we could copy it for you for less.' Lady Torquilin and I made a simultaneous movement, and looked at each other in the expressive way that all ladies understand who go shopping with each other. 'Thanks!' I said. 'It is much too expensive for me.' 'We have nothing of this style under fifteen guineas, moddam,' replied the young woman, with a climax of weary frigidity. 'Then, shall we go?' I asked Lady Torquilin--and we went. 'What a price!' said Lady Torquilin, as we left the dearest place behind us. I said I thought it was an insult--eighty-five dollars for a ready-made sprigged muslin dress!--to the intelligence of the people who were expected to buy it. That, for my part, I should feel a distinct loss of self-respect in buying anything at the dearest place. What would I be paying for? 'For being able to say that it came from the dearest place,' said Lady Torquilin. 'But I thought you Americans didn't mind what anything cost.' That misconception of Lady Torquilin's is a popular one, and I was at some pains to rectify it. 'We don't,' I said, 'if we recognise the fairness of it; but nobody resents being imposed upon more than an American, Lady Torquilin. We have our idiots, like other nations, and I daresay a good many of them come to London every year and deal exclusively at the dearest place; but as a nation, though we don't scrimp we do like the feeling that we are paying for value received.'