“Nonsense!  I didn’t mean that,” said Mr. Cockayne, now a little gruffly, for there was a limit even to his patience.

“It is difficult to tell what you mean.  I don’t think you know yourself, half your time.”

Thus agreeably beguiling the way, the pair walked to the shop in the Rue de la Paix, where the lady had seen a brooch entirely to her mind.  It was the large enamel rose-leaf, with three charming dew-drops in the shape of brilliants.

“They speak English, I hope,” said Mr. Cockayne.  “We ought to have brought Sophonisba with us.”

“Sophonisba! much use her French is in this place.  She says their French and the French she learnt at school are two perfectly different things.  So you may make up your mind that all those extras for languages you paid for the children were so much money thrown away.”

“That’s a consoling reflection, now the money’s gone,” quoth Mr. Cockayne.

They then entered the shop.  A very dignified gentleman, with exquisitely arranged beard and moustache, and dressed unexceptionably, made a diplomatic bow to Mr. Cockayne and his wife.  Cockayne, without ceremony, plunged in medias res.  He wanted to look at the rose-leaf with the diamonds on it.  The gentleman in black observed that it became English ladies’ complexion “a ravir.”

It occurred to Mr. Cockayne, as it has occurred to many Englishmen in Paris, that he might make up for his ignorance of French by speaking in a voice of thunder.  He seemed to have come to the conclusion that the French were a deaf nation, and that they talked a language which he did not understand in order that he might bear their deafness in mind.  For once in her life Mrs. Cockayne held the same opinion as her husband.  She accordingly, on her side, made what observations she chose to address to the dignified jeweller in her loudest voice.  The jeweller smiled good naturedly, and pattered his broken English in a subdued and deferential tone.  As Mr. Cockayne found that he did not get on very well, or make his meaning as clear as crystal by bawling, and as he found that the polite jeweller could jerk out a few broken phrases of English, the bright idea struck him that he, Mr. Cockayne, late of Lambeth, would make his meaning plainer than a pike-staff by speaking broken English also.  The jeweller was puzzled, but he was very patient; and as he kept passing one bracelet after another over the arm of Mrs. Cockayne, quite captivated that lady.

“He seems to think we’re going to buy all the shop,” growled Cockayne.

“How vulgar you are!  Lambeth manners don’t do in Paris.  Mr. Cockayne.”

“But they seem to like Lambeth sovereigns, anyhow,” was the aggravating rejoinder.

“If you’re going to talk like that, I’ll leave the shop, and not have anything.”

This was a threat the lady did not carry out.  She bore the enamel rose-leaf—­the leaf with the three diamonds, as her daughters had affectionately reminded her—­off in triumph, having promised that delightful man, the jeweller, to return and have a look at the bracelets another day.  She was quite enchanted with the low bow the jeweller gave her as he closed his handsome plate-glass door.  He might have been a duke or a prince, she said.