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frocks made locally and not sufficiently acquainted with
London to discover good dressmakers within their means.
Beside these, incongruously, was a large number of music-
hall artistes. This was a connection that Mr. Sampson had
worked up for himself and took great pride in. They had be-
gun by getting their stage-costumes at Lynn’s, and he had
induced many of them to get their other clothes there as
well.
‘As good as Paquin and half the price,’ he said.
He had a persuasive, hail-fellow well-met air with him
which appealed to customers of this sort, and they said to
one another:
‘What’s the good of throwing money away when you can
get a coat and skirt at Lynn’s that nobody knows don’t come
from Paris?’
Mr. Sampson was very proud of his friendship with the
popular favourites whose frocks he made, and when he went
out to dinner at two o’clock on Sunday with Miss Victoria
Virgo—‘she was wearing that powder blue we made her and
I lay she didn’t let on it come from us, I ‘ad to tell her meself
that if I ‘adn’t designed it with my own ‘ands I’d have said
it must come from Paquin’—at her beautiful house in Tulse
Hill, he regaled the department next day with abundant
details. Philip had never paid much attention to women’s
clothes, but in course of time he began, a little amused at
himself, to take a technical interest in them. He had an
eye for colour which was more highly trained than that of
anyone in the department, and he had kept from his stu-
dent days in Paris some knowledge of line. Mr. Sampson,

Of Human Bondage