Lifted Masks | Page 3

around. "Poor thing," she murmured, almost tenderly, "he doesn't know what to do. He just does need somebody to look after him." She stood there looking at his back. He had a back a good deal like the back of her chum's father at home. Indeed there were various things about him suggested "home." Did one want one's own jeered at? One might see crudities one's self, but was one going to have supercilious outsiders coughing those sham coughs behind their hypocritical hands?
"For seven hundred francs," she heard the suave voice saying.
Seven hundred francs! Virginia's national pride, or, more accurately, her national rage, was lashed into action. It was with very red cheeks that the small American stepped stormily to the rescue of her countryman.
"Seven hundred francs for _that_?" she jeered, right in the face of the enraged manager and stiffening clerks. "Seven hundred francs--indeed! Last year's model--a hideous colour, and "--picking it up, running it through her fingers and tossing it contemptuously aside--"abominable stuff!"
"Gee, but I'm grateful to you!" he breathed, again wiping his brow. "You know, I was a little leery of it myself."
The manager, quivering with rage and glaring uglily, stepped up to Virginia. "May I ask--?"
But the fat man stepped in between--he was well qualified for that position. "Cut it out, partner. The young lady's a friend of _mine_--see? She's looking out for me--not you. I don't want your stuff, anyway." And taking Virginia serenely by the arm he walked away.
"This was no place to buy dresses," said she crossly.
"Well, I wish I knew where the places were to buy things," he replied, humbly, forlornly.
"Well, what do you want to buy?" demanded she, still crossly.
"Why, I want to buy some nice things for my wife. Something the real thing from Paris, you know. I came over from London on purpose. But Lord,"--again wiping his brow--"a fellow doesn't know where to go."
"Oh well," sighed Virginia, long-sufferingly, "I see I'll just have to take you. There doesn't seem any way out of it. It's evident you can't go alone. Seven hundred francs!"
"I suppose it was too much," he conceded meekly. "I tell you I will be grateful if you'll just stay by me a little while. I never felt so up against it in all my life."
"Now, a very nice thing to take one's wife from Paris," began Virginia didactically, when they reached the sidewalk, "is lace."
"L--ace? Um! Y--es, I suppose lace is all right. Still it never struck me there was anything so very lively looking about lace."
"'Lively looking' is not the final word in wearing apparel," pronounced Virginia in teacher-to-pupil manner. "Lace is always in good taste, never goes out of style, and all women care for it. I will take you to one of the lace shops."
"Very well," acquiesced he, truly chastened. "Here, let's get in this cab."
Virginia rode across the Seine looking like one pondering the destinies of nations. Her companion turned several times to address her, but it would have been as easy for a soldier to slap a general on the back. Finally she turned to him.
"Now when we get there," she instructed, "don't seem at all interested in things. Act--oh, bored, you know, and seeming to want to get me away. And when they tell the price, no matter what they say, just--well sort of groan and hold your head and act as though you are absolutely overcome at the thought of such an outrage."
"U--m. You have to do that here to get--lace?"
"You have to do that here to get _anything_---at the price you should get it. You, and people who go shopping the way you do, bring discredit upon the entire American nation."
"That so? Sorry. Never meant to do that. All right, Young Lady, I'll do the best I can. Never did act that way, but suppose I can, if the rest of them do."
"Groan and hold my head," she heard him murmuring as they entered the shop.
He proved an apt pupil. It may indeed be set down that his aptitude was their undoing. They had no sooner entered the shop than he pulled out his watch and uttered an exclamation of horror at the sight of the time. Virginia could scarcely look at the lace, so insistently did he keep waving the watch before her. His contempt for everything shown was open and emphatic. It was also articulate. Virginia grew nervous, seeing the real red showing through in the Frenchwoman's cheeks. And when the price was at last named--a price which made Virginia jubilant--there burst upon her outraged ears something between a jeer and a howl of rage, the whole of it terrifyingly done in the form of a groan; she looked at her companion to see him holding up his hands and wobbling his head as though it