maid ("_Coiffer St. Catherine_"), and so I said in that case I should
run pins into the horrid old saint's head: I simply _won't_ be an old
maid, Mamma, so they need not make any more predictions. However, it
would be worse to be one here than at home, because even up to forty,
if you aren't married, you mayn't go to the nice theatres, or talk to
people alone, or even speak much more than "Yes" and "No," and you
generally get a nasty moustache or something. We saw a whole family of
elderly girls at our hotel at Rouen, and they all had moustaches or
moles on the cheek.

We got here (Caudebec) yesterday soon after four. Our inn looks right
on to the Seine, and is as old nearly as the one at Vernon, but
fortunately beautifully clean. Only you have to get at your room
through somebody else's. Mine is beyond the Baronne's and Madame de
Vermandoise gets at hers through the Comtesse de Tournelle's. Hers is
the most ridiculous place, with a red curtain hanging across so that
sometimes it can be turned into two; and such a thing happened last
night. "Antoine" went in with the Comte de Tournelle to help him to
shut the window, as Madame de Tournelle couldn't, when a gust of wind
blew the door shut, and whether there was a spring lock or not I don't
know, but any way nothing would induce it to open again. So there they
were. We had stayed up rather late; the landlord and the servants were
in bed. They rattled and shook and pushed, but to no purpose.

[Sidenote: _A Misadventure_]

There was only a board partition between my room and Madame de
Vermandoise's, so I could hear everything, and Tournelle said there was
nothing for it but that "Antoine" would have to sleep in the other bed
in her room. She screamed a great deal, and they all laughed very much,
and all talked at once, so I suppose that was why I could not
understand quite everything they were saying. At last the Baronne
rushed into my room to discover what the noise was. She looks perfectly
_odd_ when going to bed; a good deal seemed to have come off; she is as
thin as a lath; and on the dressing table was such a sweet lace
nightcap, with lovely baby curls sewed to its edge, and when she put
that on she did look sweet. It isn't that she has no hair herself, it's
thick and brown; but she explained that having to wear a nightcap
because of ear-ache, she found it more becoming with the curls. I
suppose it is on account of the waiters coming in with the breakfast
that the