etor going. Even such a fool as the proprietor must see, sooner or
later, that patronage of this sort could lead nowhere, from the point of
view of profits--in fact, it was ridiculous.

Antoine, lounging in his doorway, thought of his son. His only son, who,
thank God, was too young to enter the army. By the time he was old
enough for his military service, the war would all be over--it could not
last, at the outside, more than six weeks or a couple of months--so
Antoine had no cause for anxiety on that account. The lad was a fine,
husky youth, with a sprouting moustache, which made him look older than
his seventeen years. He was being taught the art of washing hair, and of
curling and dyeing the same, on the human head or aside from it, as the
case might be, and he could snap curling irons with a click to inspire
confidence in the minds of the most fastidious, so altogether, thought
Antoine, he had a good future before him. So the war had no terrors for
Antoine, and he was able to speculate freely upon the future of his son,
which seemed like a very bright, admirable future indeed, in spite of
the disturbances of the moment. Nor did he need to close the doors of
his establishment either, in spite of the loss of his assistants, and
the loss of his many customers who kept those assistants as well as
himself busy. For there still remained in Paris a good many American
heads to be washed, from time to time--rather foolhardy, adventurous
heads, curious, sensation hunting heads, who had remained in Paris to
see the war, or as much of it as they could, in order to enrich their
own personal experience. With which point of view Antoine had no
quarrel, although there were certain of his countrymen who wished these
inquisitive foreigners would return to their native land, for a variety
of reasons.

As the months rolled along, however, he who had been so farseeing, so
thrifty a business man, seemed to have made a mistake. His calculations
as to the duration of the war all went wrong. It seemed to be lasting an
unconscionable time, and every day it seemed to present new phases for
which no immediate settlement offered itself. Thus a year dragged away,
and Antoine's son turned eighteen, and his moustache grew to be so
imposing that his father commanded him to shave it. At the end of
another two months, Antoine found it best to return his son to short
trousers, for although the boy was stout and fat, he was not tall, and
in short tro