“Oh, Patty, that is just what I wanted to talk to you about!  If you are going to bring me anything in the way of a gift or a souvenir, wouldn’t you just as lieve I’d tell you what I want, as to have you pick it out yourself, and likely as not bring me something I don’t care for at all?  Everybody who brings me home souvenirs from Europe brings the most hideous things, or else something that I can’t possibly use.”

“Why, Marian, dear, I’d be only too glad to have you tell me what you want, and I’ll do my best to select it just right.”

“Well, Patty, I want a lot of photographs.  The kind we get over here are no good.  But I’ve seen the ones that come from Paris, and they’re just as different as day and night.  I’d like the Venus of Milo and the Mona Lisa and the Victory and—­oh, well—­I’ll make you out a list.  There are several Madonnas that I want, and several more that I don’t want.  And I do not want any of Nattier’s pictures or a “Baby Stuart,” but I do want some of Hinde’s hair curlers—­the tortoise-shell kind, I mean—­and you can only get them in Paris.”

By this time Patty was shaking with laughter at Marian’s list, and she asked her if she didn’t want anything else but photographs and hair curlers.

“Why, yes,” said Marian, astonished; “I’ve only just begun.  You know photographs don’t cost much over there, and of course the curlers won’t count for a present.  I thought you meant to bring me something nice.”

“I do,” said Patty, looking at her cousin, who was so comically in earnest.  “You just go on with your list, and I’ll bring all the things, if I have to buy an extra trunk to bring them in.”

“All right, then,” said Marian, encouraged to proceed.  “I want a bead bag—­one of those gay coloured ones made of very small beads, worked in old-fashioned flowers, roses, you know, or hibiscus—­not on any account the tulip pattern, because I hate it.”

“You’d better write out these instructions, Marian, or I shall be sure to get tulips by mistake.”

“Don’t you do it, Patty; I’ll write them all down most explicitly.  And then I want a scarf, a very long one, cream-coloured ground, with a Persian border in blues and greys.  But not a palm-leaf border—­I mean that queer stencilled sort of a design; I’ll draw a pattern of it so you can’t mistake it.”

“But suppose I can’t find just that kind, Marian.”

“Oh, yes, you can!  Ethel Holmes has one, and hers came from Paris.  And you’ve all winter to look for it, you know.”

“Well, I’ll devote the winter to the search, but if I don’t find it along toward spring I’ll give it up.  What else, Marian?”

“Well, I’d like a lot of Napoleon things.  Some old prints of him, you know, and perhaps a little bronze statuette, and a cup and saucer or pen-wiper, or any of those things that they make with pictures of Napoleon on.  And then—­oh!  Patty, I do want some Cyclamen perfumery.  It’s awfully hard to get.  There’s only one firm that makes it.  I forget the name, but it’s Something Bros. & Co., and their place is across the Seine.”