CHAPTER III
THE CITY OF LIGHT
“Little Thing,” I say severely, “you must never say ‘Damn.’”
“But you say it, darleen.”
“Yes, but men may do and say things women must not even think of. Say ‘Dash’ if you want to say anything.”
“Oh, you are funny. You tell me I must not say certeen words in English, yet in France everybody say ‘Mon Dieu.’”
“Yes, it’s not good form to say those words in English; just as you tell me in France in polite society one never refers to a thousand sacred pigs. Profanity is to some extent a matter of geography.”
But if I succeed in prohibiting the profanity of my country, I cannot prevent her picking up its slang. For instance, “Sure Mike” is often on her lips. She has heard me use it, and it resembles so much her own “Surement” that she naturally and innocently adopts it. I tremble now when she speaks English before any punctilious stranger, in case, to some polite inquiry, she answers with an enthusiastic: “Sure Mike.”
I have insisted on her recovering her fur from the Mont de Piété, and she in her turn has made me buy a long, black brigandish cape that has previously been worn by some budding Baudelaire or some embryo Verlaine.
“Seems to me,” I grumble, “now I have this thing I might as well get one of those bat-winged ties, and a hat with a six-inch brim.”
“Oh, you will be lovely like that,” she assures me with enthusiasm. “And you must let your hair grow long like hartist. Oh, how chic you will be!”