"Come, come," I continue in a placid and wheedling tone, "you must admit his eyebrows are like birds' nests, his teeth like tombstones, and his hair like whiskers on broomstick. Now, even at his time of life, why should he not try to wash himself?" That lets my poor friend out. He rolls his eyes, claws the air, and spits fire, till at last my Bosom's Lord, who has been unconsciously smiling and dropping bland "Wee-wee's" at ill-sorted intervals throughout the conversation, imperiously demands to know what is the matter. "Oh, nothing!" I explain; "only the gentleman wants to know whether you are a Kaffir collector of curiosities or a Hottentot marine store-dealer, that you should ask for a thing so many years behind the fashion. He says you've no more notion of style, my Queen, than a superannuated Dutch scarecrow with cheap false teeth and a father who worked for his living. He says"-- But that lets _her_ out. She turns upon the gasping foreigner as if with a view to fell him, but realising at last the pathetic inadequacy of "Wee-wee" as a conversational medium, she speechlessly grabs her umbrella, and with eyes flashing lightning, rustles out. As she is too excited to notice me, I seize the opportunity to apologise to the shopman. I explain to him that we are English. "Ah!" he says, shrugging his shoulders. No further explanation is required. I have said. * * * * * It seems mean, but no other means may serve. Once let a woman get a footing in a Paris draper's shop, and all is lost. _Par example_--to show you the system. A woman enters one of these vast magazines where the insidious, perfidious, meretricious merchandise of Paris is displayed on countless counters, in storey after storey. Suppose, after sampling all the stock, she asks for a ha'pennyworth of pins:-- "Ha'porth o' pins? Oui, madame," says the shopman. "Would madame deign to give the address to which I must send them? No, madame, it is not worth the trouble to pay now. If you desire to pay, why not pay when the goods are delivered, madame?" And, bowing madame out of the shop, he politely sweeps the floor with his hair. * * * * * On the next day the pins are delivered at Madame's address in the suburbs, by two handsome men in uniform who drive out in a handsome van. Madame uses the pins for a few days, and decides that she can do without them. Next time she passes that way she calls in the shop, visits the refreshment department, where refreshments are dispensed free of charge, lolls awhile on a sofa in the reading-room, where the newspapers are kept for the use of customers, retires to the writing-room, conducts her day's correspondence on stationery provided by the establishment, and finally, as she is passing out, informs the cashier that she has bought something which she desires to return. "Oui, madame," says he, "what address?"