his fingers or to pin among its frills the blossom named
love-in-idleness: Mimi Pinson has to wear her cap very close to her
wise little head. To herself and to those among whom she moves nothing
perhaps seems more natural than the successful carriage of this white
emblem, triumphantly borne from age to age above the dust of labor
and in the face of all kinds of temptation; but to the republican from
beyond the seas it is a kind of sacred relic. The Yankee who knows
only the forlorn aureoles of wire and greased gauze surrounding the
sainted heads of Lowell factory-girls, and the frowsy ones of New
York bookbinders, is struck by the artisanne cap as by something
exquisitely fresh, proud and truthful.

My landlady's cap was as far removed from pretence as from vulgarity.
Her hair was brown, smooth, old-fashioned and nun-like. I looked
at her hand, which, having replaced the pen, was inviting me with a
gesture of its handsome squared fingers to contribute my autograph,
I made my note, pausing often to look up at my beautiful
writing-mistress: "PAUL FLEMMING, American: from Paris to Marly--by
way of the Rhine."

I had not finished, when, lowering her pretty head to scrutinize
my crabbed handwriting, she cried, "It is certainly he, the
americain-flamand! I was certain I could not be mistaken."

"Do you know me then, madame?'

"Do I know you? And you, do you not recognize me?"

"I protest, madame, my memory for faces is shocking; and, though there
are few in the world comparable with yours--"

She interrupted me with a gesture too familiar to be mistaken. A
tumbler was on the desk filled with goose-quills. Taking this up
like a bouquet, and stretching it out at arm's length to an imaginary
passer-by, she sang, with a mischievous professional _brio_, "Fresh
roses to-day, all fresh! White lilacs for the bride, and lilies for
the holy altar! pinks for the button of the young man who thinks
himself handsome. Who buys my bluets, my paquerettes, my marguerites,
my pensees?"

It was strangely like something I well knew, yet my mind, confused
with the baggage of unexpected travel, refused to throw a clear light
over this fascinating rencounter.

The little landlady threw her head back to laugh, and I saw a small
rose-colored tongue surrounded with two strings of pearls: "Very well,
Monsieur Flemming! Have you forgotten the two chickens?"

It was the exclamation by which, in his neat tavern, I had recognized
my brave old f