and isn't there any way you can just _buy_ things--the way you
do in Cincinnati? Can't you get their stuff without making a comic
opera out of it?"

"No, you can't," spoke relentless Virginia; "not unless you want
them to laugh and say 'Aren't Americans fools?' the minute the door
is shut."

"Fools--eh? I'll show them a thing or two!"

"Oh, please show them nothing here! Please just--sit."

While employing her wiles to get for three hundred and fifty francs a
yoke and scarf aggregating four hundred, she chanced to look at her
American friend. Then she walked rapidly to the rear of the shop,
buried her face in her handkerchief, and seemed making heroic efforts
to sneeze. Once more he was following directions to the letter. Chin
resting on hands, hands resting on stick, the huge American had taken
on the beatific expression of a seventeen-year-old girl thinking of
something "very far away." Virginia was long in mastering the sneeze.

On the sidewalk she presented him with the package of lace and also
with what she regarded the proper thing in the way of farewell
speech. She supposed it _was_ hard for a man to go shopping
alone; she could see how hard it would be for her own father; indeed
it was seeing how difficult it would be for her father had impelled
her to go with him, a stranger. She trusted his wife would like the
lace; she thought it very nice, and a bargain. She was glad to have
been of service to a fellow countryman who seemed in so difficult a
position.