heir house, and that never again would an extra charge be
made for refitting any garment costing over ten pounds. He thanked her
again for her letter, but could not resist saying at the close that it
was the most astonishing letter he had ever received in his life, and he
begged to enclose the two pounds ten overcharge.

Jimmie fairly howled for joy as he read this letter aloud; Bee looked
very much mortified; Mrs. Jimmie exceedingly perplexed, as if uncertain
what to think, but I confess that all my irritation against British
shopkeepers fell away from me as a cast-off garment. I blush to say that
I shared Jimmie's delight, and when he solemnly made me a present of the
two pounds ten I had so heroically earned, I soothed my ladylike
sister's refined resentment by inviting all three to have broiled
lobster with me at Scott's.

I imagine, however, that one woman's experience with dressmakers is like
all others. I have noticed that to introduce the subject of my personal
woes in the matter is to make the conversation general, in fact I might
say composite, no matter how formal the gathering of women. Like the
subject of servants, it is as provocative of conversation as classical
music.

Far be it from me, however, to class all shopping in London under the
head of dry goods, or the rage one gets into with every dressmaker. In
most of the shops, in fact, I may say, in all of them (for the one
unfortunate experience I have related in the jeweller's shop was the
only one of the kind I ever had in London), the clerks are universally
polite, interested, and obliging, no matter how smart the shop may be.
Take for instance, Jay's, or Lewis and Allenby's. The instant you stop
before the smallest object a saleswoman approaches and says, "Good
morning." You say, "What a very pretty parasol!" and she replies, "It
_is_ pretty, isn't it, modom?" She wears a skin-tight black cashmere
gown with a little tail to it. Her beautiful broad shoulders, flat back,
tiny waist, bun at the back of her head, and the invisible net over the
fringe, all proclaim her to be an Englishwoman, but her pronunciation of
the simplest words, and the way her voice goes up and down two or three
times in a single sentence, sometimes twice in a single word, might
sometimes lead you to think she spoke a foreign tongue.

The English call all our voices monotonous, but it was several weeks
after I reached London for the first time before I could catch the
signific