PROVINCIAL SHOPS

All magasins of any standing are served by pretty girls. This is a point of policy. Proprietors of French shops in the towns of the War area have come to know that the man to whom they sell is largely the English officer in rest about the town or on his way through it. He also knows enough of the psychology of the English officer to be sure that if his shop is known to be served by pretty girls, the officer who has been segregated from women for three months will enter, ostensibly to purchase, actually to talk with the girls; also that every time he wishes to see pretty girls he will make a purchase the pretext, and will not be dismayed by the frequency of his purchases nor by their price. To the officer from the line feminine intercourse is reckoned cheap at the price of socks and ties.

They know the temper of the man in rest from the trenches; he will have what he likes, and hang the price. So they ask what they like, and get it. This is, of course, hard on the man permanently stationed in the town; but it is not for him they cater. And even should he refuse to buy at all, it is nothing to them. They can batten on the traveller and the man in rest, and they do.

The best-remembered shops in D—— are the provision shop (agent for FÉlix Potin), the newspaper shop opposite the HÔtel de Ville, the boot shop in the Rue ——, the pipe shop in the Rue ——.

FÉlix Potin's agency is proprieted by a masterful woman, extremely handsome and well-figured. She is consciously proud of this as she sits at the receipt of custom and directs the policy. She is a very able business woman. She is never baffled by the smallest detail referred to her by an underling. She knows the price of the smallest bottle of perfume (though there she may, of course, be improvising—and with safety). If stock has been exhausted in any commodity she knows when its reinforcements will arrive from Paris. She herself does the Parisian buying. The whole town knows when she has been to Paris, and when she will be going next. She makes a knowledge of these buying-excursions intimate to all her considerable patrons. Her periodical trips are parochial events. You will hear one officer say to another in an English mess: "Oh, Madame —— is off to Paris on Sunday;" or, "Madame —— will be back to-morrow." This is very flattering, and very good for business.

But she purchases well. There is the finest array of perfumes and soaps, champagne and liqueurs, cakes and biscuits, chocolates, Stilton and GruyÈre, eggs and butter, almonds and chestnuts. It is FÉlix Potin in little, with all the richness of FÉlixian variety and quality. If it's wine you are buying, she'll take you below to the cellars; that's a rich and vivifying spectacle. The whole shop is shelved, desked, and finished with an appearance of distinction; the windows are dressed with a taste and an avoidance of super-crowding that would grace the Rue de la Paix. The whole magasin is in a class beyond compare with any other shop in D——. It puts one in the dress-circle to purchase a box of chocolates there. But in the interests of finance he had far better make the purchase at the Expeditionary Force Canteen. At the canteen you pay neither for the atmosphere of the place nor for the expense of importation from Paris.

The stationer's shop opposite the HÔtel de Ville gets the English newspaper daily. Towards evening there is an incessant stream of privates, N.C.O's, and Staff-Officers asking for the daily sheet from England. "'Delly Mell,' m'sieur?—pas encore arrivÉe." (The voyageur arrives late in these parts.) It's with difficulty you can elbow your way about this shop at most hours of the afternoon. Soldiers who call for the paper loiter, attracted by the post-cards or the range of English novels. The post-cards are spread out in an inciting array. They are Parisian in their frankness.

Everyone knows the boot shop. There are four boot shops in D——. But when you speak of the boot shop there is no doubt in the mind of the company which is the shop referred to, because the prettiest girl in D—— is there. When an officer appears in the street with new boots (though he guilelessly bought them at Ordnance) his friends will say: "Ha! did she try them on for you? Was she long about it? It's a pretty pair of shoulders, n'est-ce pas?" It is but fitting that the shop with the prettiest girl in D—— should be the most expensive. So it is. Better go bare-footed unless you have "private means" or can get access to an Ordnance clothing store—or (better still) get an "issue."

But who can avoid the tobacconist's in the Rue ——? One must have a well-finished pipe now and then, and the widow's daughter is handsome and speaks a kind of English. In accordance with the French usage, madame, as a widow, has been given this tobacco shop by the State. Had she been daughterless, or had her daughter been unlovely, she would have imported some jolie demoiselle. But she had no need. Marie ThÉrÈse fills the rÔle. And Marie ThÉrÈse is kept busy by a genuine queue of purchasers. For this is the shop where small purchases are most excusable, and in any case it is an easy matter to ask for an impossible brand of tobacco and listen with feigned amazement to Marie ThÉrÈse's pretty, well-gestured regrets that she has it not. But she has other. But you explain how you are a purist, and none other will do. And if the shop is not busy—which is seldom indeed—such explanations can be made elaborate and prolonged, and Marie ThÉrÈse can be made intelligently interested in the inscrutable whims of thoroughgoing smokers. But the damsel is not all guileless. If it is your ill-fortune that she has what you ask, you pay well and truly. And Marie ThÉrÈse knows as well as you (though neither says so) that you have paid for the repartee.

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND