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tle.’
‘Yes, I quite understand, Miss Antonia,’ said the buyer,
with a bland smile, but his eyes grew blank and stupid.
‘I expect I shall ‘ave to pop over to Paris for it in the end.’
‘Oh, I think we can give you satisfaction, Miss Antonia.
What you can get in Paris you can get here.’
When she had swept out of the department Mr. Sampson,
a little worried, discussed the matter with Mrs. Hodges.
‘She’s a caution and no mistake,’ said Mrs. Hodges.
‘Alice, where art thou?’ remarked the buyer, irritably, and
thought he had scored a point against her.
His ideas of music-hall costumes had never gone beyond
short skirts, a swirl of lace, and glittering sequins; but Miss
Antonia had expressed herself on that subject in no uncer-
tain terms.
‘Oh, my aunt!’ she said.
And the invocation was uttered in such a tone as to in-
dicate a rooted antipathy to anything so commonplace,
even if she had not added that sequins gave her the sick. Mr.
Sampson ‘got out’ one or two ideas, but Mrs. Hodges told
him frankly she did not think they would do. It was she
who gave Philip the suggestion:
‘Can you draw, Phil? Why don’t you try your ‘and and see
what you can do?’
Philip bought a cheap box of water colours, and in the
evening while Bell, the noisy lad of sixteen, whistling three
notes, busied himself with his stamps, he made one or two
sketches. He remembered some of the costumes he had
seen in Paris, and he adapted one of them, getting his effect

0 Of Human Bondage