'We have nothing of this style under fifteen guineas, moddam,' replied the young woman, with a climax of weary frigidity. 'Then, shall we go?'
'What a price!' said Lady Torquilin, as we left the dearest place behind us.
I said I thought it was an insult--eighty-five dollars for a ready-made sprigged muslin dress!--to the intelligence of the people who were expected to buy it. That, for my part, I should feel a distinct loss of self-respect in buying anything at the dearest place. What would I be paying for?
'For being able to say that it came from the dearest place,' said Lady Torquilin. 'But I thought you Americans didn't mind what anything cost.'
That misconception of Lady Torquilin's is a popular one, and I was at some pains to rectify it. 'We don't,' I said, 'if we recognise the fairness of it; but nobody resents being imposed upon more than an American, Lady Torquilin. We have our idiots, like other nations, and I daresay a good many of them come to London every year and deal exclusively at the dearest place; but as a nation, though we don't scrimp we do like the feeling that we are paying for value received.'
'Well,' said Lady Torquilin, 'I believe that is the case. I know Americans talk a great deal about the price of things--more, I consider, than is entertaining sometimes.' I said I knew they did--it was a national fault--and what did Lady Torquilin think the dress I had on cost, just to compare it with that muslin, and Chicago was by no means a cheap place for anything. Lady Torquilin said she hadn't an idea--our dollars were so difficult to reckon in; but what did I think hers came to--and not a scrap of silk lining about it. And so the time slipped away until we arrived in the neighbourhood of Cavendish Square, at what Lady Torquilin called 'the happy medium,' where the windows were tempting, and the shopwalker smiled, and the lady-in-waiting was a person of great dignity, in high, black sleeves, with a delightful French accent when she talked, which she very seldom forgot, and only contradicted when she said ''Ow' and ''elliotrope,' and where things cost just about what they did in America.
Original I have gone very patiently ever since to the happy medium, partly to acquire the beautiful composure of the lady-in-waiting, partly to enjoy the respect which all Americans like so much in a well-conducted English shop, and partly because at the happy medium they understand how to turn shopping into the pleasant artistic pastime it ought to be, which everybody in America is in far too much of a hurry to make a fortune and retire to do for his customers. I am on the most agreeable footing with the lady in the sleeves now, and I have observed that, as our acquaintance progresses, her command of English consonantal sounds remarkably increases. But I have never been able to reconcile myself, even theoretically, either to the cheapest place, in the Edgware Road, or the dearest place, in Bond Street.