pocrisy. Ugh!

"Any news of the handsome Mr. Daker? It strikes me, dear Emmy, 'Uncle
Sharp' didn't send him up from Maidstone with a letter of introduction
to his niece for nothing.

"Your affectionate friend,
"CARRIE C."

CHAPTER VIII.

"OH, YES!" AND "ALL RIGHT!"

Lucy was privileged to read the following:--

_Miss Carrie Cockayne to Miss Emily Sharp._

"Rue Millevoye, Paris.

"MY DEAREST EMMY,--I should certainly not venture to offer any
remarks on taste to you, my love, under ordinary circumstances. But I am
provoked. I have passed a severe round of _soirees_ of every
description. Jaded with the fantastic activities of a fancy-dress
genteel riot, I have been compelled to respond to the intimation of the
Vicomtesse de Bois de Rose, that "_on sautera_". I have jumped with the
rest. I have half killed myself with _sirops, petit-fours_, those
microscopic caricatures of detestable British preparation--sandwiches
(pronounced _sonveetch_), _bouillon_, and chocolate, in the small hours;
ices in tropical heats; _foie-gras_ and champagne about two hours after
healthy bedtime, and tea like that which provoked old Lady Gargoyle to
kick over the tea-table in her boudoir--in her eightieth year, too. The
Gargoyles (I shall have much to tell you about them when we meet) were
always an energetic race; and I feel the blood tingling in me while my
eye wanders over the impertinences of the French chroniqueurs, when they
are pleased to be merry at the expense of _la vieille Angleterre_. I
hold I am right; am I not?--that when even a chroniqueur--that smallest
of literary minnows--undertakes to criticize a foreign nation, at least
the equal of his own, he should start with some knowledge of its
language, history, manners, and customs. But what do we find? The
profoundest ignorance of the rudiments of English. The special
correspondent sent to London by the _Figaro_ to be amusing on our darker
side, cannot spell the word theatre; but he is trenchant when dealing
with what he saw at the Adelphi _Theater_. How completely he must have
understood the dialogue, he who describes Webster as a _comique de
premier ordre!_ In the same paper the dramatic critic, after explaining
that at the rehearsals of _L'Abime_, the actors, who continually are
complaining that they are ordered off on the wrong side, are quieted
with