Virginia rode across the Seine looking like one pondering the destinies of nations. Her companion turned several times to address her, but it would have been as easy for a soldier to slap a general on the back. Finally she turned to him.
“Now when we get there,” she instructed, “don't seem at all interested in things. Act—oh, bored, you know, and seeming to want to get me away. And when they tell the price, no matter what they say, just—well sort of groan and hold your head and act as though you are absolutely overcome at the thought of such an outrage.”
“U—m. You have to do that here to get—lace?”
“You have to do that here to get anything—-at the price you should get it. You, and people who go shopping the way you do, bring discredit upon the entire American nation.”
“That so? Sorry. Never meant to do that. All right, Young Lady, I'll do the best I can. Never did act that way, but suppose I can, if the rest of them do.”
“Groan and hold my head,” she heard him murmuring as they entered the shop.
He proved an apt pupil. It may indeed be set down that his aptitude was their undoing. They had no sooner entered the shop than he pulled out his watch and uttered an exclamation of horror at the sight of the time. Virginia could scarcely look at the lace, so insistently did he keep waving the watch before her. His contempt for everything shown was open and emphatic. It was also articulate. Virginia grew nervous, seeing the real red showing through in the Frenchwoman's cheeks. And when the price was at last named—a price which made Virginia jubilant—there burst upon her outraged ears something between a jeer and a howl of rage, the whole of it terrifyingly done in the form of a groan; she looked at her companion to see him holding up his hands and wobbling his head as though it had been suddenly loosened from his spine, cast one look at the Frenchwoman—then fled, followed by her groaning compatriot.
“I didn't mean you to act like that!” she stormed.
“Why, I did just what you told me to! Seemed to me I was following directions to the letter. Don't think for a minute I'm going to bring discredit on the American nation! Not a bad scheme—taking out my watch that way, was it?”
“Oh, beautiful scheme. I presume you notice, however, that we have no lace.”