for whom she does not care a hair-pin, stand up, one in white and the
other in black, and mumble a few words that she knows by heart, and then
take position at the end of a room and have "society" paraded up to them
by solemn little corporals with white favors, and then file off to the
rear for rations of Perigord pie and Champagne.

_Tomes._ Well said, Grey! Here's another of the many ways of wasting
life by your embellishment of it.

_Mr. Key._ I don't know precisely what Mr. Tomes means; but as to
ill-dressed people, I'm sure that the set you meet at the Jones's are
the best-dressed people in town; and I never saw in Paris more splendid
toilettes than were there this morning.

_Miss Larches._ Why, to be sure! What can Mr. Grey mean? There was Mrs.
Oakum's gray and silver brocade, and Mrs. Cotton's _point-de-Venice_
mantle, and Miss Prime and Miss Messe and Miss Middlings, who always
dress exquisitely, and Mrs. Shinnurs Sharcke with that superb India
shawl that must have cost two thousand dollars! What could be finer?

_Mrs. Grey._ And then Mrs. Robinson Smith, celebrated as the
best-dressed woman in town. Being a connection of the family, and so a
sort of hostess, she wore no bonnet; and her dress, of the richest _gros
d'Afrique_, had twenty-eight pinked and scalloped flounces, alternately
one of white and three of as many graduated tints of green. So elegant
and distinguished!

_Grey._ Twenty-eight pinked and scalloped flounces of white and
graduated tints of green! With her pale, sodden complexion, she must
have looked like an enormous chicken-salad _mayonnaise._