ee it again.

When we got to London, Bee and I put on our best street clothes and
started out to buy Jimmie his birthday present. We searched everywhere,
but found that all gun-metal articles in London were either plain or
studded with diamonds. We couldn't find a pearl. Finally in one shop I
explained my search to a tall, heavy man, evidently the proprietor, who
had small green eyes set quite closely together, a florid complexion,
and hay-coloured side-whiskers. His whiskers irritated me quite as much
as the fact that he hadn't what I wanted. Perhaps my hat vexed him, but
at any rate he looked as though he were glad he didn't have the pearls,
and he finally permitted his annoyance, or his general British rudeness,
to voice itself in this way:

"Pardon me, madame," he said, "but you will never find cigar-cases of
gun-metal studded with pearls, no matter how much you may desire it, for
it is not good taste."

I was warm, irritated, and my dress was too tight in the belt, so I just
leaned my two elbows on that show-case, and I said to him:

"Do you mean to have the impertinence, my good man, to tell two American
ladies that what they are looking for is not in good taste, simply
because you are so stupid and insular as not to keep it in stock? Do you
presume to express your opinion on taste when you are wearing a green
satin necktie with a pink shirt? If you had ever been off this little
island, and had gone to a land where taste in dress, and particularly in
jewels, is understood, you would realise the impertinence of criticising
the taste of an American woman, who is trying to find something worth
while buying in so hopelessly British a shop as this. Now, my good man,"
I added, taking up my parasol and purse, "I shall not report your
rudeness to the proprietor, because doubtless you have a family to
support, and I don't wish to make you lose your place, but let this be a
warning to you never to be so insolent again," and with that, I simply
swept out of his shop. I seldom sweep out. Bee says I generally crawl
out, but this time I was so inflated with an unholy joy that I
recklessly cabled to Paris for Jimmie's pearls, and to this day I
rejoice at the way that man covered his green satin tie with his large
hairy red hand, and at the ecstatic smiles on the faces of two clerks
standing near, for I _knew_ he was the proprietor when I called him "My
good man."

If you want to open an account in London, you have to be vou