ad it, madam.'

'Oh,' said Lily, 'I have had it, have I? Now, none of your nonsense,
young man! Do you know who I am? I'm Mrs. Albert Shawn.'

'Mr. Randall,' the cashier called out coldly, and a grave and gigantic
shopwalker appeared who knew not the name of Albert Shawn, and who
firmly told Mrs. Shawn that if she wished to make a complaint she must
make it at the Central Inquiry Office, ground-floor, Department 1A.

Lily had been brazenly robbed at Hugo's by an employe of Hugo! She was
elbowed away by other women apparently anxious to be robbed. She wanted
to cry, but suddenly remembering her identity, and her pass to the
presence of Hugo, she threw up her head and marched off through the
crowds.

She had not proceeded twenty yards before she was stopped by a group of
persons round a policeman--a policeman obviously called in from Sloane
Street. A stout woman of lady-like appearance had been arrested on a
charge of attempted pocket-picking. An accusatory shopwalker charged
her, and she replied warmly that she was Lady Brice (_nee_
Kentucky-Webster), the American wife of the well-known philanthropist,
and that her carriage was waiting outside. The policeman and the
shopwalker smiled. It was so easy to be the wife of a well-known
philanthropist, and in these days all the best pickpockets had their
carriages waiting outside.

'I know this lady by sight,' said Lily. 'She visited the common-rooms
last year to see the arrangements, with Mr. Hugo, and he called her Lady
Brice, and I can tell you he'll be very angry with you.'

'And who are _you_, my young friend?' said the policeman sceptically,
and threateningly.

'I'm--'

The formula proved useless. Lady Brice (_nee_ Kentucky-Webster) was led
off in all her vast speechless, outraged impeccability, and poor little
Lily was glad to escape with her freedom and the memory of Lady Brice's
grateful bow.

She ran, gliding in and out between the knots of visitors, until she was
stopped by a pair of doors being suddenly shut and fastened in her face.
The reason for the obstruction was plain. Those doors admitted to the
blouse department, and the blouse department, as Lily could see through
the diamond panes, was a surging sea of bargain-hunters, amid which
shopwalkers stood up like light-houses, while the girls behind the
counters trembled in fear of being washed away. Discipline, order,
management, had ceased to exist at Hugo's.

Mrs. Shawn turned to seek another route