"But you would look very well in the natural grey, ma'am."
"My husband doesn't think so."
"But his hair is grey."
"That doesn't lessen his regard for brunettes."
Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene shrugged her majestic shoulders and gazed again into the street. She always regretted that Madame could not be induced to make private visits.
A white poodle, recently shampooed, dashed through the rooms. There is always a watery-eyed, red-lidded poodle in an establishment of this order. The masculine contempt for the pug has died. It took twenty years to accomplish these obsequies. But the poodle, the poor poodle! Call a man a thief, a wretch, a villain, and he will defend himself; but call him a poodle, and he slinks out of sight. It is impossible to explain definitely the cause of this supreme contempt for the poodle, nor why it should be considered the epitome of opprobrium to be called one.
"Maime?"
"Yes, Madame!" replied the girl in the hall.
"Take Beauty into the kitchen and close the door. He's just been washed, and I don't want him all speckled up with hair-dye."
The girl drove the poodle out of the reception-room and caught him in the hall. Presently the kitchen door slammed and the odor of onions in soup no longer fought against the perfumes and soaps for supremacy.