"Is it your custom to send back towels reduced to two hems connected by a few stray rags in the middle?"
The young woman was aghast. "All towels are handled as gently as possible to avoid tearing," she replied.
"How about handkerchiefs?" I asked. "I dislike to find myself grasping my bare nose through a hole in the centre."
The suggestion made my visitor laugh.
"Are you in the habit of sewing nasty bits of red thread, impossible to extricate, into conspicuous parts of one's clothing?"
"Oh, no, Madam," she asseverated; "no linen is allowed to leave our establishment with any disfiguring marks."
"You never, I suppose, return clothing dirtier than when it reached you?" I proceeded.
Suppressed scorn that I could believe in such a possibility flashed momentarily from her eyes before she uttered an emphatic denial.
"Nor do you ever perhaps send home garments belonging to other people while one's own are missing?"
"Never, I can assure you, Madam."