"My dear," said Mr. Cockayne, addressing his wife, "people find Paris
fatiguing because they walk about the streets all day, and give
themselves no rest. If we did the same thing at Clapham----"

"There, that will do, Cockayne," the lady sharply answered. "I'm sure
I'm a great deal too tired to hear speeches. Order me some iced water.
You talk about French politeness, Cockayne. I think I never saw people
stare so much in the whole coarse of my life. And some boys in blue
pinafores actually laughed in our very faces. I know what _I_ should
have done to them, had _I_ been their mother. What was it they said,
Sophy, my dear?"

"I didn't quite catch, mamma; these people talk so fast."

"They seem to me," Mrs. Cockayne continued, "to jumble all their words
one into another."

"That is because----" Mr. Cockayne was about to explain.

"Now, pray, Mr. Cockayne, do leave your Mutual Improvement Society
behind, and give us a little relief while we are away. I say the people
jumble one word into another in the most ridiculous manner, and I
suppose I have ears, and Sophy has ears, and we are not quite lunatics
because we have not been staring our eyes out all the morning at things
we don't understand."

Here Carrie, lifting her eyes from her book, said to her father--

"Papa dear, you remember that first Sculpture Hall, where the colossal
figures were; that was the Salle des Caryatides, and those gigantic
figures you admired so much were by Jean Goujon. Just think! It was in
this hall that Henry IV. celebrated his wedding with Marguerite de
Valois. Yes, and in this very room Moliere used to act before the
Court."

"Yes," Mrs. Cockayne interjected, pointing to Carrie's hands, "and in
that very room, I suppose, Miss Caroline Cockayne appeared with her
fingers out of her glove."

"And where have you been all day, my dear?" Mr. Cockayne said, in his
blandest manner, to his wife.

"We poor benighted creatures," responded Mrs. Cockayne, "have been--pray
don't laugh. Mr. Cockayne--looking at the shops, and very much amused we
have been, I can assure you, and we are going to look at them to-morrow,
and the day after, and the day after that."

"With all my heart, my dear," said Mr. Cockayne, who was determined to
remain in the very best of tempers. "I hope you have been amused, that
is all."

[Illustration: PALAIS DU LOUVRE.]

[Illustration: THE ROAD TO THE BOIS]

"We have had a delightful day," said Sophonisba.

"I am