ked.

"Yes, sir. You see it's so difficult to fit the young lady without any
corsets, and she is really so short we have only a few skirts that
will do for her."

I looked at Suzee as she stood before me. The figure, so exquisite in
its lines when unclothed, looked too soft and shapeless under the
cloth coat. She appeared absurdly short, too, beside the American
assistant, who stood at least five feet eleven. I could not bear to
see my little Suzee so disfigured. However, that she looked far more
ordinary could not be disputed. She would attract less attention now,
and that might be an advantage. Her head was still bare and had its
Oriental character, but the colour of her skin against the grey cloth
lost its creaminess that it had possessed above the blue silk jacket.
It now looked merely sallow.

I paid nine guineas for the hideous dress, ordered the silk clothes to
be sent to the hotel, and then we went on to the millinery. Amongst
these frightful edifices my heart sank still more, but I steeled
myself to the ordeal, and, choosing out the simplest grey one I could
find, directed the giggling young shop-assistant to try it on Suzee.

The immense coiffure of shining black hair of the Chinese girl did not
lend itself to any Western hat. Hat and hair together made her head
appear out of proportion to the small, short figure.

At last, in despair, I said:

"You must alter your hair and do it in a different way. Could you take
it down now and roll it up small at the back, do you think?"

Suzee gazed on me in mild surprise.

"Take my hair down, here and now! Why, it's done up for a fortnight!"
she answered simply, while the shop-girl turned away to replace a hat
and hide her titters.

"Do you only do your hair once a fortnight?" I enquired, surprised in
my turn.

"Yes, that's all. It's such a bother to do. It was done just before
you came. I thought it would do for a month, I took such pains with
it."

A month! So that beautiful, scented, shining coiffure was only brushed
out once a month!

A sudden memory of Viola and her gleaming light tresses swept over me,
as I had seen them at night lying on her shoulders. But had I not
often waited for her till I was deadly sleepy, and when at length she
came to the bedside and I had asked her what she had been doing all
that time, had she not generally said--"brushing her hair"?

Perhaps, after all, a coiffure that never detained its owner at night
except once a mon