“Or a footman,” Mr. Cockayne added.  “I don’t call all that bowing and scraping business.”

When Mr. and Mrs. Cockayne returned to the Grand Hotel, they found their daughters Sophonisba and Theodosia in a state of rapture.

“Mamma, mamma!” cried Sophonisba, holding up a copy of La France, an evening paper, “you know that splendid shop we passed to-day, under the colonnades by the Louvre Hotel, where there was that deep blue moire you said you should so much like if you could afford it.  Well, look here, there is a ‘Grande Occasion’ there!” and the enraptured girl pointed to letters at least two inches high, printed across the sheet of the newspaper.  “Look! a ‘Grande Occasion!’”

“And pray what’s that, Sophy?” Mrs. Cockayne asked.  “What grand occasion, I should like to know.”

“Dear me, mamma,” Theodosia murmured, “it means an excellent opportunity.”

“My dear,” Mrs. Cockayne retorted severely to her child, “I didn’t have the advantage of lessons in French, at I don’t know how many guineas a quarter; nor, I believe, did your father; nor did we have occasion to teach ourselves, like Miss Sharp.”

“Well, look here, mamma,” Miss Sophonisba said, her eyes sparkling and her fingers trembling as they ran down line after line of the advertisement that covered the whole back sheet of the newspaper.  “You never saw such bargains.  The prices are positively ridiculous.  There are silks, and laces, and muslins, and grenadines, and alpacas, and shawls, and cloaks, and plain sultanes, and I don’t know what, all at such absurdly low prices that I think there must be some mistake about it.”

“Tut,” Mr. Cockayne said; “one of those ‘awful sacrifices’ and bankrupt stock sales, like those we see in London, and the bills of which are thrown into the letter-box day after day.”

“You are quite mistaken, papa dear, indeed you are,” Theodosia said; “we have asked the person in the Bureau down stairs, and she has told us that these ‘Grandes Occasions’ take place twice regularly every year, and that people wait for them to make good bargains for their summer things and for their winter things.”

The lady in the Bureau was right.  The prudent housewives of Paris take advantage of these “Grandes Occasions” to make their summer and winter purchases for the family.  In the spring-time, when the great violet trade of Paris brightens the corners of the streets, immense advertisements appear in all the daily and weekly papers of Paris, headed by gigantic letters that the fleetest runner may read, announcing extraordinary exhibitions, great exhibitions, and unprecedented spring shows.  “Poor Jacques” offers 3000 cashmere shawls at twenty-seven francs each, 2000 silk dresses at twenty-nine francs, and 1000 at thirty-nine francs.  “Little Saint Thomas,” of the Rue du Bac, has 90,000 French linos, 1000 “Jacquettes gentleman,”