but has gone through so many hands since then, and accumulated so much
dirt and grease in the process, that one wonders how the dealer would
have ventured to advance the few sous which its last wretched owner had
raised upon it.

In this place I exchanged, without much difficulty, my female
habiliments for a suit of respectable masculine attire. I took it home,
and with a feeling of shame of which I could not get rid, but yet with
unflinching resolution, arrayed myself in it. As a woman I know I am not
handsome; my mouth is large and my skin dark; but this rather favored my
disguise; for had I been very pretty, my beardless face and weak voice
might have awakened more suspicion. I cut my hair off short, parted it
at one side, brushed it with great care, and crowned it with a jaunty
cap, which, I must say, was very becoming to me. In this dress I
appeared a tolerably well-looking youth of nineteen or thereabout, for
the change of garments made me look younger than I was.

As I surveyed myself in the little cracked looking-glass which served me
as a mirror, I could not forbear laughing at the transformation.
Certainly no one would have recognized me, for I could scarcely
recognize myself.

Folding the old cloak around me, I sallied forth. With the long, thick
braid of hair I had cut from my head, I purchased a breakfast, the best
I had eaten in a long time.

Then I went direct to the residence of the gentleman who had said I
would suit him exactly, if I were a young man. There had been something
in the tone of this gentleman's letter that attracted me, I could not
tell why. To my great joy, he had not yet found the person he wanted;