"I am," cried Pixie with unction. "It would be awful to slope down into your neck. All the same, me dear, if it was my eyes that were bigger, and my mouth that was smaller, it would be better for all concerned." She was silent for some moments, staring thoughtfully in the fire. From time to time she frowned, and from time to time she smiled; Bridgie divined that a thought was working, and lay back in her seat, amusedly watching its development. "There's a place in Paris," continued Pixie thoughtfully at last, "an institute sort of place, where they repair noses! You sort of go in, and they look at you, and there are models and drawings, and _you choose your nose_! The manager is an expert, and if you choose a wrong style he advises, and says another would suit you better. I'd love a Greek one myself; it's so _chic_ to float down straight from the forehead, but I expect he'd advise a blend that wouldn't look too _epatant_ with my other features.--It takes a fortnight, and it doesn't hurt. Your nose is gelatine, not bone; and it costs fifty pounds." "Wicked waste!" cried Mrs Victor, with all the fervour of a matron whose own nose is beyond reproach. "Fifty pounds on a nose! I never heard of such foolish extravagance." "Esmeralda paid eighty for a sealskin coat. A nose would last for life, while if a single moth got inside the brown paper--whew!" Pixie waved her hands with the Frenchiness of gesture which was the outcome of an education abroad, and which made an amusing contrast with an Irish accent, unusually pronounced. "I'd think nothing of running over to Paris for a fortnight's jaunt, and having the nose thrown in. Fancy me walking in on you all, before you'd well realised I was away, smart and smiling with a profile like Clytie, or a sweet little acquiline, or a neat and wavey one, like your own. You wouldn't know me!" "I shouldn't!" said Bridgie eloquently.