"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."

"Does the man who delivers the washing habitually turn the basket
upside down so that the heavy things below crush all the delicate
frilly things that ought to be on top?"

She seemed incapable of conceiving that such perverted creatures could
exist.