owed."

"Pirates?" Billy Woods suggested, helpfully.

"Pirates are human beings," said Colonel Hugonin, with dignity.
"Sharks, my boy; sharks!"

VIII

That evening, after proper deliberation, "Celestine," Miss Hugonin
commanded, "get out that little yellow dress with the little red
bandanna handkerchiefs on it; and for heaven's sake, stop pulling
my hair out by the roots, unless you want a _raving_ maniac on your
hands, Celestine!"

Whereby she had landed me in a quandary. For how, pray, is it possible
for me, a simple-minded male, fittingly to depict for you the clothes
of Margaret?--the innumerable vanities, the quaint devices, the
pleasing conceits with which she delighted to enhance her comeliness?
The thing is beyond me. Let us keep discreetly out of her wardrobe,
you and I.

Otherwise, I should have to prattle of an infinity of mysteries--of
her scarfs, feathers, laces, gloves, girdles, knots, hats, shoes,
fans, and slippers--of her embroideries, rings, pins, pendants,
ribbons, spangles, bracelets, and chains--in fine, there would be no
end to the list of gewgaws that went to make Margaret Hugonin even
more adorable than Nature had fashioned her. For when you come to
think of it, it takes the craft and skill and life-work of a thousand
men to dress one girl properly; and in Margaret's case, I protest that
every one of them, could he have beheld the result of their united
labours, would have so gloried in his own part therein that there
would have been no putting up with any of the lot.

Yet when I think of the tiny shoes she affected--patent-leather ones
mostly, with a seam running straight up the middle (and you may guess
the exact date of our comedy by knowing in what year these shoes were
modish); the string of fat pearls she so often wore about her round,
full throat; the white frock, say, with arabesques of blue all over
it, that Felix Kennaston said reminded him of Ruskin's tombstone; or
that other white-and-blue one--_decollete_, that was--which I swear
seraphic mantua-makers had woven out of mists and the skies of June:
when I remember these things, I repeat, almost am I tempted to become
a boot-maker and a lapidary and a milliner and, in fine, an adept
in all the other arts and trades and sciences that go to make a
well-groomed American girl what she is--the incredible fruit
of grafted centuries, the period after the list of Time's
achievements--just that I might describe Margaret to you pro