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 CHAPTER VII

A MOST IMPRUDENT THING

Madame Bourcet sat in the snuff-colored drawing-room, nursing her rheumatism, when in walked Fifi as demure as the cat after it has eaten the canary. She mentioned casually that she had bought a few things for her trousseau, and Madame Bourcet presumed that the sum total of expenditure was something like a hundred francs. Still, with visions of the pink spangled gown which Fifi wished to buy for her presentation to the Holy Father, Madame Bourcet thought it well to say, warningly:

"I hope your purchases were of a sober and substantial character, warranted to wear well, and in quiet colors."

"Wait, Madame, until you see them," was Fifi's diplomatic answer.

As soon as she could, she escaped to her own room, and, locking the door, she opened her precious trunk with the relics of her theatrical life in it, and began to handle them tenderly.