“How’d you like to go with me to Paris next month to get new styles?”
Mimi came back to the subject at hand with a start. She gasped.
“Go with you to France?” she echoed.
“ Certainement! ” came the answer as Madame Francine remembered her French. “You speak French, don’t you? And you’ve a keen eye. And you can use your own head—your imagination. I’m not so young as I once was. It’s a real bother for me to chase around as I must—going to the shops, the races, the theatres and the opera, the smart hotels and restaurants, everywhere I can pick up ideas. You see, my dear, I always carry an artist with me who’s got a mind like the sensitive, so sensitive plate of a camera—he sees a gown or a hat and he never forgets a single detail until he has sketched it on paper.”
“I see,” murmured Mimi, though she didn’t see at all. Her mind was too filled with the prospect of going to Paris. But she must have made her reply sound interested and intelligent enough, for Francine went on.
“Only the department stores and wholesalers buy models—we only absorb ideas and then develop them ourselves. That’s why we can ask and get two hundred dollars and up for a gown while the department stores sell theirs for seventy-five.” In her voice there was a tinge, faint but unmistakable, of scorn when she spoke of “wholesalers” and “department stores.” So might have Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting have spoken of the common people. Or so might one of the war millionaires have spoken of one of his victims. Or an Englishman of anyone not an Englishman.
“We’ll sail the last week in December and we’ll be in Paris six weeks. I make two trips a year—June and December. I’ll introduce you over there and if you make good, I’ll let you go over for me at least once a year alone. …”