It occurred to Mr. Cockayne, as it has occurred to many Englishmen in Paris, that he might make up for his ignorance of French by speaking in a voice of thunder. He seemed to have come to the conclusion that the French were a deaf nation, and that they talked a language which he did not understand in order that he might bear their deafness in mind. For once in her life Mrs. Cockayne held the same opinion as her husband. She accordingly, on her side, made what observations she chose to address to the dignified jeweller in her loudest voice. The jeweller smiled good naturedly, and pattered his broken English in a subdued and deferential tone. As Mr. Cockayne found that he did not get on very well, or make his meaning as clear as crystal by bawling, and as he found that the polite jeweller could jerk out a few broken phrases of English, the bright idea struck him that he, Mr. Cockayne, late of Lambeth, would make his meaning plainer than a pike-staff by speaking broken English also. The jeweller was puzzled, but he was very patient; and as he kept passing one bracelet after another over the arm of Mrs. Cockayne, quite captivated that lady. "He seems to think we're going to buy all the shop," growled Cockayne. "How vulgar you are! Lambeth manners don't do in Paris. Mr. Cockayne." "But they seem to like Lambeth sovereigns, anyhow," was the aggravating rejoinder. "If you're going to talk like that, I'll leave the shop, and not have anything." This was a threat the lady did not carry out. She bore the enamel rose-leaf--the leaf with the three diamonds, as her daughters had affectionately reminded her--off in triumph, having promised that delightful man, the jeweller, to return and have a look at the bracelets another day. She was quite enchanted with the low bow the jeweller gave her as he closed his handsome plate-glass door. He might have been a duke or a prince, she said. "Or a footman," Mr. Cockayne added. "I don't call all that bowing and scraping business." When Mr. and Mrs. Cockayne returned to the Grand Hotel, they found their daughters Sophonisba and Theodosia in a state of rapture. "Mamma, mamma!" cried Sophonisba, holding up a copy of _La France,_ an evening paper, "you know that splendid shop we passed to-day, under the colonnades by the Louvre Hotel, where there was that deep blue _moire_ you said you should so much like if you could afford it. Well, look here, there is a '_Grande Occasion_' there!" and the enraptured girl pointed to letters at least two inches high, printed across the sheet of the newspaper. "Look! a 'Grande Occasion!'" "And pray what's that, Sophy?" Mrs. Cockayne asked. "What grand occasion, I should like to know." "Dear me, mamma," Theodosia murmured, "it means an excellent opportunity."