customers.

The theatres over here are getting extremely--well, what our
grandparents termed "_risqués_," but it really goes further than
that. And the worst of it is my countrypeople seem to think
it's the smart thing to go to them, which they do most
indiscriminately. _Heureusement_ they don't understand the stuff.
Whenever I see a most circumspect and highly proper British matron
entering one of the Boulevard theatres nowadays I think what
a mercy it is that we as a nation rely so much on pronouncing
phrase-books for acquiring foreign languages. It keeps one so
single-minded in the midst of a wicked world.

But, after all, propriety is a _question de localité_. Else why
do people do things here which would badly shock us at home? _Par
exemple_, dancing between the courses of a meal is our latest
_caprice_ here; but I was _un peu étonnée_, the other evening, to
see the Duchess of Mintford, at a restaurant of the most _chic_,
jazzing off the effects of the turbot with light-hearted
_abandon_.

Unfortunately a waiter carrying a tray darted across the track
at the very moment when she was involved in that step so
_embrouillant_, the side-roll.

It took quite a long time to collect, and put in their proper
order, the waiter, the contents of the tray, her Grace and all the
other jazzers who were coming up behind.

But, _après tout_, little comment was roused because most of the