en she began to talk; but, my goodness, her
French was awful. I couldn't understand a word of it. Once in a while
she would chuck an English word in, and rush on again like a mill-dam.

When I tried to put in a word of genuine French or pure English, she
lifted her hands, hitched up her shoulders, and seemed as if she was
swearing at me one minute and wanted to kiss me the next. I couldn't
stand that.

"How much will you ask--how many yards will it take. _La pre la pre?_"
says I, bursting into French.

The woman looked around on her girls, spread her hands as if praying for
help, and then, all red in the face, she burst into English. Then I knew
she did not understand her own native tongue, and gave her a sarcastic
smile.

"I find everything. How many yards? Oh, that depends on the idea, the
invention. I have it here growing in my brain. The price? Ah, I cannot
tell. When the work is complete then we know. There will be crepe and
point--"

"But I don't want points," says I. "Talk in English if you don't
understand your own language. The price, the price!"

"Oh, very well, it shall be to your own satisfaction--perfect," says
she, and then the creature shook out her hands as if she was shewing
chickens from a corn-crib, and before I could say another word she
shewed me on to the steps and shut the door.

Well, I went back to my boarding-house, beat out and worried almost to
death. Figures are satisfactory to the New England mind; but when you
have only a whirlpool of broken words, ending with satisfaction, with a
woman's hands spread out on her bosom, and nothing more, it is
tantalizing. But I reckon the figures will come by and by, only I
_should_ like to have an idea of what they will count up to.

As I was saying in the beginning of my report, ten thousand anxious
female bosoms thrilled with expectations every night, and existence
dragged wofully in literary and fashionable circles until that
auspicious moment arrived when the son of an Imperial Emperor cast
refulgence on our Western Hemisphere. But the waiting of us young girls
was lonesome, very.

I had done my best. For the first time in my life I had twisted my
front hair into little wire tongs they call crimping-pins; maybe it was
their tightness that held my eyes so wide open last night. I was trying
with all my strength to shut them, when the sound of a cannon, ever so
far off, brought me up in the bed, with my hand clasped and the heart in
my bosom