Shop assistants are so invariably prepared to give advice on matters of dress and domestic management that I suppose there are people who go to shops not to buy but to have a heart-to-heart talk about what they shall buy. They must be the same amiable creatures who conduct their love affairs under “Aunt Lena’s” superintendence in the penny magazines. I refuse to believe that the shop assistant really cares for what purpose I want a quarter of a yard of green velvet cut on the cross. “What is it for?” the girl asks wearily as she reaches up for the box. “Is it for a hat?” If you are just silly you tell her, perhaps, that it is for a pair of boots, in which case she is as kind as before and replies, “Fancy dress, I suppose. In that case you had better bring the dress it is to go with and I’ll see you get it matched. What is the name of the character you are going as? because we have some special brocades for characters from Shakespeare. You will find them in the theatrical department, straight through on the left.” If you are polite and tell her that in fact you want it for the collar of your coat that Uncle Sam gave you at Christmas, because it got spoilt with the cork of the freckle lotion having come out in your box, she tells you that it is a pity to buy velvet at all: there is so little velvet worn now. The embroidered collars are far newer and, with your complexion, would be less trying than the velvet. “You’ve rather a high colour, haven’t you?” she adds (looking herself like an anæmic gooseberry). She probably aims this dart at you on a sultry day, when you have been apoplectically following the straight path on the left for two hours in search of white cotton and a tooth-brush. If I want pale green cotton flecked with ruby and just a soupçon of chenille mixed with the thread, I can get it at the first attempt. Every counter of every shop in the street will stock it in abundance; but things like white cotton and tape and safety-pins are not stocked within the four-mile radius. You have to spend an hour in the tube, with frequent changes, before you reach the suburbs where are the little post office linendrapers that keep the daily necessaries of every woman’s existence. “Pins! Oh, no, Madam, not pins like that we don’t keep. We have the fancy-headed ones, twelve inches long, and a very nice two-inch glass pin at two-three the pair. I fancy you might get the sort you want out in Bayswater. I couldn’t name any particular shop just for the moment, but I fancy you would find some there. If not, you will get them at some of the small establishments by the Crystal Palace.”