with each negative announcement,
and accompanied her affirmations with a gracious bow and a smile full of
rice powder.

She rendered everything so agreeable, indeed, that it almost seemed
impolite to inquire narrowly into matters, and when the question of
price had to come up it was really difficult to bring it forward, and
Richling quite lost sight of the economic rules to which he had silently
acceded in the _Rue Du Maine_.

"And you will carpet the floor?" he asked, hovering off of the main
issue.

"Put coppit? Ah! cettainlee!" she replied, with a lovely bow and a wave
of the hand toward Mrs. Richling, whom she had already given the same
assurance.

"Yes," responded the little wife, with a captivated smile, and nodded to
her husband.

"We want to get the decentest thing that is cheap," he said, as the
three stood close together in the middle of the room.

The landlady flushed.

"No, no, John," said the wife, quickly, "don't you know what we said?"
Then, turning to the proprietress, she hurried to add, "We want the
cheapest thing that is decent."

But the landlady had not waited for the correction.

"_Dis_sent! You want somesin _dis_sent!" She moved a step backward on
the floor, scoured and smeared with brick-dust, her ire rising visibly
at every heart-throb, and pointing her outward-turned open hand
energetically downward, added:--

"'Tis yeh!" She breathed hard. "_Mais_, no; you don't _want_ somesin
dissent. No!" She leaned forward interrogatively: "You want somesin
tchip?" She threw both elbows to the one side, cast her spread hands
off in the same direction, drew the cheek on that side down into the
collar-bone, raised her eyebrows, and pushed her upper lip with her
lower, scornfully.

At that moment her ear caught the words of the wife's apologetic
amendment. They gave her fresh wrath and new opportunity. For her new
foe was a woman, and a woman trying to speak in defence of the husband
against whose arm she clung.

"Ah-h-h!" Her chin went up; her eyes shot lightning; she folded her arms
fiercely, and drew herself to her best height; and, as Richling's eyes
shot back in rising indignation, cried:--

"Ziss pless? 'Tis not ze pless! Zis pless--is diss'nt pless! I am
diss'nt woman, me! Fo w'at you come in yeh?"

"My dear madam! My husband"--

"Dass you' uzban'?" pointing at him.

"Yes!" cried the two Richlings at once.

The woman folded her arms again, turned half-aside, and, lifting her
eye