BEAUTY & THE B——.
Usually a severe Excursionist.
"My dear," said Mr. Cockayne, addressing his wife, "people find Paris fatiguing because they walk about the streets all day, and give themselves no rest. If we did the same thing at Clapham——"
"There, that will do, Cockayne," the lady sharply answered. "I'm sure I'm a great deal too tired to hear speeches. Order me some iced water. You talk about French politeness, Cockayne. I think I never saw people stare so much in the whole coarse of my life. And some boys in blue pinafores actually laughed in our very faces. I know what I should have done to them, had I been their mother. What was it they said, Sophy, my dear?"
"I didn't quite catch, mamma; these people talk so fast."
"They seem to me," Mrs. Cockayne continued, "to jumble all their words one into another."
"That is because——" Mr. Cockayne was about to explain.
"Now, pray, Mr. Cockayne, do leave your Mutual Improvement Society behind, and give us a little relief while we are away. I say the people jumble one word into another in the most ridiculous manner, and I suppose I have ears, and Sophy has ears, and we are not quite lunatics because we have not been staring our eyes out all the morning at things we don't understand."
Here Carrie, lifting her eyes from her book, said to her father—
"Papa dear, you remember that first Sculpture Hall, where the colossal figures were; that was the Salle des Caryatides, and those gigantic figures you admired so much were by Jean Goujon. Just think! It was in this hall that Henry IV. celebrated his wedding with Marguerite de Valois. Yes, and in this very room Molière used to act before the Court."
"Yes," Mrs. Cockayne interjected, pointing to Carrie's hands, "and in that very room, I suppose, Miss Caroline Cockayne appeared with her fingers out of her glove."