he puzzled Nannette.

"It is an English dish--I explained it to you before--slices of bread
and butter, with ham between."

"Oh la, sir!" exclaimed the maid--"I have forgotten that ragout--oh
dear!"

"Well--make haste, Nannette; get ready some immediately, while my
daughter hands round the tea and muffins--you can bring them in on a
tray."

The old domestic hurries into the kitchen grumbling at the English
dainty, and cuts some slices of bread and covers them with butter; but
as she had never thought of the ham, she cogitates a long time how she
can supply the want of it--at last, on looking round, she discovers a
piece of beef that had been left at dinner.

"Pardieu," she says, "I'll cut some lumps of this and put them on the
bread. With plenty of salt they'll pass very well for ham--they'll drive
me wild with their English dishes--they will."

The maid speedily does as she says, and then hurries into the room with
a tray covered with her extempore ham sandwiches.

Every body takes one,--for they have grown quite fashionable along with
tea. But immediately there is an universal murmur in the assembly. The
ladies throw their slices into the fire, the gentlemen spit theirs on
the furniture, and they cry--"why the devil do people give us things
like these?--they're detestable."

"It's my opinion, God forgive me! the man means to feed us with scraps
from the pig-trough," says another.

"It's a regular do, this soiree," says a third.

"The tea is disgustingly smoked," says a fourth.

"And all the little cakes look as if they had been fingered before,"
says the fifth.

"Decidedly they wish to poison us," says the big man in the neckcloth,
looking very morose.

M. Lupot is in despair. He goes in search of Nannette, who has hidden
herself in the kitchen; and he busies himself in gathering up the
fragments of the bread and butter from the floor and the fireplace.

Madame Lupot says nothing; but she is in very bad humour, for she has
put on a new cap, which she felt sure would be greatly admired; and a
lady has come to her and said--

"Ah, madame, what a shocking head-dress!--your cap is very
old-fashioned--those shapes are quite gone out."

"And yet, madame," replies Madame Lupot, "I bought it, not two days ago,
in the Rue St Martin."

"Well, madame--Is that the street you go to for the fashions? Go to
Mademoiselle Alexina Larose Carrefous Gaillon--you'll get delicious caps
there--new fashions and every t