The United States custom-house spotter ought to look like a detective, but he doesn't. Instead of playing Foxy Quiller, he plays bridge, and probably with you. He adores the ladies—the dear ladies, God bless 'em! For it is the ladies whom the spotter mostly spots: the pretty ladies with big state-rooms and big trunks and big hats; the pretty ladies with the little maids and little evening gowns and little pearls. The spotter has to be the sort of man these ladies like, or else the Government will change his spots. In short, he is a perfect dear! So when, at bridge, he makes the coy confession that he is taking French silk stockings over to his sister and wonders if he'll "have trouble on the pier," your wife tells him just what she is doing. ("One can't mistake a gentleman!") She tells him that she's going into her state-room to sew some New York labels into Paris gowns and hats—and that is how she comes to lose twelve dresses and a twenty-thousand-dollar necklace, and have hysterics on the dock, and how she never sends that dinner invitation to him at the club in Forty-fourth Street.
