It seems mean, but no other means may serve. Once let a woman get a footing in a Paris draper's shop, and all is lost.
Par example—to show you the system. A woman enters one of these vast magazines where the insidious, perfidious, meretricious merchandise of Paris is displayed on countless counters, in storey after storey.
Suppose, after sampling all the stock, she asks for a ha'pennyworth of pins:—
"Ha'porth o' pins? Oui, madame," says the shopman. "Would madame deign to give the address to which I must send them? No, madame, it is not worth the trouble to pay now. If you desire to pay, why not pay when the goods are delivered, madame?"
And, bowing madame out of the shop, he politely sweeps the floor with his hair.
On the next day the pins are delivered at Madame's address in the suburbs, by two handsome men in uniform who drive out in a handsome van. Madame uses the pins for a few days, and decides that she can do without them.
Next time she passes that way she calls in the shop, visits the refreshment department, where refreshments are dispensed free of charge, lolls awhile on a sofa in the reading-room, where the newspapers are kept for the use of customers, retires to the writing-room, conducts her day's correspondence on stationery provided by the establishment, and finally, as she is passing out, informs the cashier that she has bought something which she desires to return.
"Oui, madame," says he, "what address?"