t-of-door, corporate life. On Sundays, it does not bury itself, like
provincial England, in a cellular house. It walks abroad. It indulges in
its modest pleasures. It is serious, it is intensely conscious of
family, but it can take deep breaths of freedom. It is not Sundayfied
into our vacuous boredom. It clings to the picturesque, in which it
finds its dignified delight. The little soldier clad in blue tunic and
red trousers struts along with his _fiancee_ or _maitresse_ on his arm;
the cuirassier swaggers by in brass helmet and horsehair plume; the
cavalry officer, dapper in light blue, with his pretty wife, drinks
syrup at a neighbouring table in your cafe. The work-girls, even on
Sunday, go about bareheaded, as though they were at home in the friendly
street. The cure in shovel hat and cassock; the workmen for whom Sunday
happens not to be the _jour de repos hebdomadaire_ ordained by law, in
their blue _sarreau_; the peasants from outlying villages--the men in
queer shell-jackets with a complication of buttons, the women in
dazzling white caps astonishingly gauffered; the lawyer in decent black,
with his white cambric tie; the fat and greasy citizen with fat and
greasy wife and prim, pig-tailed little daughter clad in an exiguous
cotton frock of loud and unauthentic tartan, and showing a quarter of an
inch of sock above high yellow boots; the superb pair of gendarmes with
their cocked hats, wooden epaulettes and swords; the white-aproned
waiters standing by cafe tables--all these types are distinct, picked
out pleasurably by the eye; they give a cheery sense of variety; the
stage is dressed.

So when Jaffery asked me what in the world we were going to do all day,
I replied:

"Sit here."

"Don't you want to see the place?"

"The place," said I, "is parading before us."

"We might hire a car and run over to Etretat."

"There's Liosha," I objected. "We can't leave her alone and she's not in
a mood for jaunts."

"She won't leave her room to-day, poor girl. It must be awful for her.
Oh, that swine of a blighter!"

His wrath exploded again over the iniquitous Fendihook. For the dozenth
time we went over the story.

"What on earth are we going to do with her?" he asked. "She can't go
back to the boarding-house."

"For the time being, at any rate, I'll take her down to Barbara."

"Barbara's a wonder," said he fervently. "And do you know, Hilary,
there's the makings of a devilish fine woman in Liosha, if one on