vince a very stout, elderly gentleman
that check trousers would make him look like a sylph.

"Ah, Madame, what a surprise," she cried, on seeing me.

"But your husband?" I queried. "Is it really serious--do tell me!"

"Alas, Madame, he says he'll never put his foot in the shop again. You
see he's very sensitive since he was scalped, and he's afraid somebody
might know he has to wear a wig!"

VI

The Boche aeroplane was by no means a novelty to the Parisian. Its
first apparitions over the capital (1914) were greeted with curious
enthusiasm, and those who did not have a field glass handy at the time,
later on satisfied their curiosity by a visit to the Invalides, where
every known type of enemy machine was displayed in the broad court-yard.

The first Zeppelin raid (April 15th, 1915) happened toward midnight,
and resulted in a good many casualties, due not to the bombs dropped by
the enemy, but to the number of colds and cases of pneumonia and
bronchitis caught by the pajama-clad Parisian, who rushed out half
covered, to see the sight, thoughtlessly banging his front door behind
him.

But the first time that we were really driven to take shelter in the
cellar was after dinner at the home of a friend who lives in an
apartment house near the Avenue du Bois. We were enjoying an impromptu
concert of chamber music, when the alarm was given, swiftly followed by
distant but very distinct detonations, which made hesitation become
imprudence.

The descent to the basement was accomplished without undue haste, or
extraordinary commotion, save for an old Portuguese lady and her
daughter who lost their heads and unconsciously gave us a comic
interlude, worthy of any first-class movie.

Roused from her sleep, the younger woman with self preservation
uppermost in her mind, had slipped on an outer garment, grabbed the
first thing she laid her hands on, and with hair streaming over her
back, dashed down five long flights of stairs.

At the bottom she remembered her mother, let forth an awful shriek, and
still holding her bottle of tooth wash in her hands, jumped into the
lift and started in search of her parent.

In the meantime, the latter on finding her daughter's bed empty, had
started towards the lower floors, crossing the upward bound lift, which
Mademoiselle was unable to stop.

Screams of terror, excited sentences in Portuguese--in which both gave
directions that neither followed, and for a full ten minutes