"Yes, mamma," Theodosia answered. "_Chocolat du Papillon_. Yes; and you know, mamma, there was the linen-draper's with the sign _A la Pensee_. I never heard such ridiculous nonsense." "Yes; and there was another, my dear," said Mrs. Cockayne, "'To the fine Englishwoman,' or something of that sort." "Oh, those two or three shops, mamma," said Sophonisba, "dedicated _A la belle Anglaise!_ Just think what people would say, walking along Oxford Street, if they were to see over a hosier's shop, written in big, flaring letters, 'To the beautiful Frenchwoman!" Mr. Cockayne laughed. Mrs. Cockayne saw nothing to laugh at. She maintained that it was a fair way of putting the case. Mr. Cockayne said that he was not laughing at his wife, but at some much more ridiculous signs which had come under his notice. "What do you say," he asked, "to a linen-draper's called the 'Siege of Corinth?' or the 'Great Conde?' or the 'Good Devil'?" "What on earth has La Belle Jardiniere got to do with cheap trowsers, Mr. Cockayne?" his wife interrupted. "You forget your daughters are in the room." "Well, my dear, the Moses of Paris call their establishment the Belle Jardiniere." "That's not half so absurd, papa dear," Sophonisba observed, "as another cheap tailor's I have seen under the sign of the 'Docks de la Violette.'" "I don't know, my dear; I thought when my friend Rhodes came back from Paris, and told me he had worn a pair of the Belle Jardinieres----" "Mr. Cockayne!" screamed his wife. "Well, unmentionables, my dear--I thought I should have died with laughter." "Sophonisba, my dear, tell us what the paper says about that magnificent shop under the Louvre colonnade; your father is forgetting himself." "Dear mamma," said Sophonisba, "it would take me an hour to read all;" but she read the tit-bits. "My dears," said Mrs. Cockayne to her daughters, "it would be positively a sin to miss such an opportunity." Mr. Cockayne took up the paper which Sophonisba had finished reading, and running his eye over it, said, with a wicked curling of his lip-- "My dear Sophy, my dear child, here are a number of things you've not read." Sophonisba tittered, and ejaculated--"Papa dear!" "We have heard quite enough," Mrs. Cockayne said, sternly; "and we'll go to-morrow, directly after breakfast, and spend a nice morning looking over the things." "But there are really two or three items, my dear, Sophy has forgotten. There are a lot of articles with lace and pen work; and think of it, my love, ten thousand ladies' chem----" Mrs. Cockayne started to her feet, and shrieked-- "Girls, leave the room!" "What a pity, my dear," the incorrigible Mr. Cockayne continued, in spite of the unappeasable anger of Mrs. Cockayne--"what a pity the _Magasins de Louvre_ were not established at the time of the celebrated emigration of the ten thousand virgins; you see there would have been just one apiece." CHAPTER VI. A "GRANDE OCCASION."