The door was opened by a becapped maid, and Hamilton was shown into a handsomely furnished drawing room.  On a table in the corner, the boy caught sight of a pile of fashion magazines, and he was sure that he was on the right track.  After a few moments’ delay, a richly dressed little Frenchwoman bustled in.  She seemed surprised to see the boy, and halted on the threshold.  Hamilton rose.

“I understand, Madame,” he said, “that you are an ‘exclusive’ milliner?”

The woman looked bewildered.

“You make hats?” Hamilton continued, perceiving at a glance that the woman was foreign-born.

“Is it a hatter zat you want?” she asked.

“No, no,” the boy replied, “I just want to know if you are a milliner?”

The Frenchwoman, not at all enlightened by this explanation, answered: 

“I do not make ze hats; I design zem, and ze ozzers make zem.”

“Oh, I thought you were the proprietor,” said Hamilton; “then you don’t own this place!”

“I am ze proprietor, but I do not own ze house,” she said; “I pay ze rent.  But why you ask?  I pay my rent!”

“Oh, of course,” answered Hamilton, “but that has nothing to do with it.  I did not wish to trouble you that way.  I come from the census, and wanted to make sure that this was the place I was looking for.”

“What is zat—­ze census?”

“That is the way the government finds out about all the people in the country,” explained Hamilton, “their names and how old they are, what they work at and how many people they employ, the wages they pay or are paid, and all sorts of things.”

The Frenchwoman’s eyes had been getting bigger and rounder at every sentence, and when Hamilton had finished, she said with an air of regretful surprise: 

“An’ they tol’ me zere was no police spy in America!”

“There isn’t, so far as I know,” the boy answered.

“But you—­”

“I’m not a police spy,” the boy said, a little nettled at being misunderstood.

“No?  Zen zat is all ze more strange.  In my country zose are ze questions ze gendarmes ask.  An’ if you are not policeman, why do you wear badge?” she queried, pointing to the little census shield on Hamilton’s coat.

“That has nothing to do with the police,” the boy insisted, “that’s a census badge.  Madame,” he added, “do I look like a policeman?”

The Frenchwoman, remembering the military appearance of the gendarmes of her native land and the burly make-up of the American policeman, shook her head.

“Perhaps you are disguise’?” she said, with a smile.

“No, I’m not disguised,” Hamilton responded, “and the badge is just to show that I have the right to ask you these questions.”

“I do not know anyzing at all about it,” the milliner objected, “but if you say you have ze right!” she shrugged her shoulders and sat down.

Hamilton promptly picked up his portfolio, opened it on his knee, and began to put some of the queries required.  He got along well enough while the formal questions about name, address, nature of work, and so forth were in hand, but the question about the number of hours worked during the year made the woman most indignant.