"Oh!" her voice rose with an irrepressibly joyful lilt. "Are you sure?"
"Quite puffeckly sure. Don't I shop well, now?"
"But I could have made the old one do!" Her dimples refused to be repressed. "Denis, what a dream that feather is! And the sweep of the brim—"
"Oh, stow it, Nell! Great Scott, spare me more! I've had enough of hat-jargon to last me a lifetime. 'So chaste, isn't it? So pure—so simple—but of an elegance so chic! A poem, Monsieur, an idyll—a three-volume novel! It expresses so much! Worn so—cocked over the right ear—it is gay, insouciante, of an impudence, Monsieur! So—down in front—demure, sweet, to suit the freshness of a young demoiselle—'"
"Denis, you're making it up!"
"Oh, well, that's the sort of stuff they talked—more or less. Wish old Lancaster had come in! He's gone off to meet his governor at Paddington."
"What does he do, Denis?"
"Who, the old man? Used to sell pigs or tallow candles or something."
His eyes twinkled.
"He made his money in something like that. I forget what it was. Believe it was lamp oil!"