or the 'Good Devil'?"

"What on earth has La Belle Jardiniere got to do with cheap trowsers,
Mr. Cockayne?" his wife interrupted. "You forget your daughters are in
the room."

"Well, my dear, the Moses of Paris call their establishment the Belle
Jardiniere."

"That's not half so absurd, papa dear," Sophonisba observed, "as
another cheap tailor's I have seen under the sign of the 'Docks de la
Violette.'"

"I don't know, my dear; I thought when my friend Rhodes came back from
Paris, and told me he had worn a pair of the Belle Jardinieres----"

"Mr. Cockayne!" screamed his wife.

"Well, unmentionables, my dear--I thought I should have died with
laughter."

"Sophonisba, my dear, tell us what the paper says about that magnificent
shop under the Louvre colonnade; your father is forgetting himself."

"Dear mamma," said Sophonisba, "it would take me an hour to read all;"
but she read the tit-bits.

"My dears," said Mrs. Cockayne to her daughters, "it would be positively
a sin to miss such an opportunity."

Mr. Cockayne took up the paper which Sophonisba had finished reading,
and running his eye over it, said, with a wicked curling of his lip--

"My dear Sophy, my dear child, here are a number of things you've not
read."

Sophonisba tittered, and ejaculated--"Papa dear!"

"We have heard quite enough," Mrs. Cockayne said, sternly; "and we'll go
to-morrow, directly after breakfast, and spend a nice morning looking
over the things."

"But there are really two or three items, my dear, Sophy has forgotten.
There are a lot of articles with lace and pen work; and think of it, my
love, ten thousand ladies' chem----"

Mrs. Cockayne started to her feet, and shrieked--

"Girls, leave the room!"

"What a pity, my dear," the incorrigible Mr. Cockayne continued, in
spite of the unappeasable anger of Mrs. Cockayne--"what a pity the
_Magasins de Louvre_ were not established at the time of the celebrated
emigration of the ten thousand virgins; you see there would have been
just one apiece."

CHAPTER VI.

A "GRANDE OCCASION."

"Well, these Paris tradespeople are the most extraordinary persons in the
world," cried Sophonisba's mamma, and the absolute ruler of Mr.
Cockayne. "I confess I can't make them out. They beat me. My dear, they
are the most independent set I ever came across. They don't seem to care
whether you buy or you don't; and they ask double what they intend to
take."

"What is the matter now, my