CHAPTER IXTHE MYSTERIOUS BAG
TheSilver Gate tourists all assembled for breakfast in the hotel dining-room dressed for their excursion. The clothes worn by them on shipboard had been packed in a box to be forwarded to Liverpool, in readiness for the home voyage, and The Happy Six appeared now in tidy new suits. Miss Evans wore a neat black mohair and a fresh black straw hat, but had not laid aside the familiar reticule.
“The bag looks like a padlock, Paul. Do you suppose she needs all that to fasten her belt?”
“It seems like it,” murmured Paul.
But the remarks were strictly confidential.The boys would not have injured Miss Evans’s feelings on any account: they were too well-bred for that. Besides, they liked her very much.
The early breakfast—orle café—consisted ofcafé au lait,—which is coffee served with boiled milk,—rolls, and unsalted butter. This butter had been moulded into the shape of wild roses, with petals as thin as wafers, and each guest had two of these wee roses on a tiny dish beside his plate at table.
“Papa enjoys the butter, don’t you see, mamma?” said Molly, in a low tone as they left the dining-room.
“Yes, I observed it,” returned her mother, looking pleased. “I fancy his appetite is really improving.”
Then they all mounted the black jaunting-car waiting in the court. Donald was in boisterous spirits: so delighted at his escapefrom the confinement of the steamer that he could hardly contain himself.
The two seats of the car ran lengthwise and faced each other. Miss Evans sat near the front, just behind the driver’s box, which the voluble coachman shared with Captain Bradstreet. Frenchcochersare very fond of imparting information, and this one discoursed so rapidly concerning the farms, houses, and people along the way that the captain finally turned around to Miss Evans with a comical look of despair, and said,—
“Willyou please tell me what this man is raving about? He telescopes his words so that I can’t understand him.”
“He was speaking just now of these neat piles of broken stone by the roadside, Captain Bradstreet,” replied Miss Evans, smiling. “He says government requires every man to furnish a given weight—I missed the number of pounds—of this crushed stone to repair the highways.”
“That’s why the roads look so very neat. Just the thing for bicycles. I wish they had such a law in the United States.”
“I made the same remark to thecocher,” returned Miss Evans, who seemed to talk to the man with the greatest ease.
After this, she was constantly appealed to for translating French into English. On one of these occasions, Mrs. Rowe said, with one of her affable smiles, “We are grateful to you, Miss Evans, for acting as our interpreter. Mr. Rowe and I find ourselves sadly rusty in French.”
“So are Molly and I, Miss Evans,” added Pauline. “You never would dream that we’ve just been studying it; now would you?”
“And we had good marks at school, too,” said Molly. “I don’t see what the trouble is.”
“I do,” said Pauline. “Weare not onebit to blame. The people don’t understand their own language, that’s all. Ask ’em a question, and they just shake their heads and rattle off the sounds of the vowels,—‘A, ah, aw, ă, ē, e,’ and so on.”
Pauline was a capital mimic, and rendered this burlesque of foreign speech with a drollery that provoked loud applause and aroused Donald to a high pitch of enthusiasm.
“A, ah, ow; bow, wow wow,” he screamed, waving his little hands like Pauline.
Jane Leonard quietly slipped her arm about his waist to prevent his falling from the carriage, and whispered him to be quiet, for her head ached. She considered little Number Six a very noisy child. Though too young to appreciate the quaint, beautiful pictures of the constantly changing landscape, he enjoyed their novelty, and was constantly trying to express his delight.
“And this is Normandy,” said Mrs. Rowe,drawing a long breath of satisfaction; “picturesque Normandy.”
Ancient houses, on which were growing grass and flowers,—among the flowers thefleur-de-lis, or lily of France. By the roadside, gorgeous red poppies, hobnobbing with the blue corn-flower or bachelor’s button. Acres and acres of sugar beets, and of flax, and of absinthe. In one valley, some peasants—men and women—were pulling the absinthe and laying it in rows to dry.
“They should burn it instead,” Captain Bradstreet remarked rather severely. “The drink they make from absinthe intoxicates and does them much harm.”
“But it’s a good medicine and brings them a deal of money,” said Mr. Rowe.
Farther on, at a turning of the road, Donald gave an ecstatic little scream and pointed with his finger.
“Oh, look, mamma, look!”
An old dame was approaching, leading five cows abreast, all tied together by the horns.
“She seems to be moving her dairy,” remarked Kirke to the carriage at large.
“Herdairy? The dairy of the whole neighborhood, more likely,” said Paul.
“Acow-operative dairy,” suggested Pauline quickly, whereupon they all laughed.
A little way behind the “co-operative dairy” followed a young peasant woman in a short dress trundling a black baby carriage.
“Think of a solemn black carriage like that for a dear little baby!” exclaimed Mrs. Rowe. “Yet the French are called a cheerful people!”
They passed black Norman carts with enormous wheels, and the carts were drawn by Norman horses with large hairy feet.
“Not a bit like America anywhere,” said Kirke, “and I’m glad of it. We came here to see something new.”
It was late in the afternoon when The Happy Six and their elders reached the fishing village where they were to spend the night. Its gray stone inn was more than two hundred years old, and like many inns in Europe had once been a castle. There were no carpets, but the floors were spotlessly white, and the copper saucepans and kettles in the kitchen shone through the windows of the room as the setting sun shone through the ruins on the neighboring cliff.
After dinner the gentlemen and lads of the company prowled about these ruins in the twilight, while Pauline and Molly chatted in the inn parlor with three young English girls boarding with their mother in the house.
Miss Evans, wearing the alligator-skin bag, as was her habit, came in to read by the lamp upon the centre-table; but, after Weezy and Donald were in bed, went to assist Mrs.Rowe in the care of Jane Leonard, who was now suffering severely from headache.
The next day Jane could not raise her head from the pillow. Mrs. Rowe and Miss Evans sat with her by turns, while Donald was left to the care of the rest of the party.
This disposal of himself suited his little lordship, for, everybody’s business being nobody’s, he was allowed to run at large, and within certain limits do about as he pleased.
Captain Bradstreet, Paul, and Kirke had set out early for another peep at the ruins, and as soon as the dew was off the grass Donald slipped away from his father, lounging in front of the hotel, and trudged behind Weezy and the older girls toward the sea.
The beaten path which they followed ended abruptly at the smooth, flat cobble-stones of the shelving beach. Here stood a row of disabled old fishing-boats, drawn up above the dashing of the tide and fashioned into rudecottages, each with a thatched roof, narrow door, and two or three small windows.
It was in these tiny buildings that the fishermen stored their wares. As the children drew near, fish-wives were sitting upon the door-steps of some of the boat-houses, netting seines of coarse green twine. A few of the women wore starched white caps with wide, flopping borders. The rest were bare-headed, and the sun stared saucily down at their shiny red faces.
“Let’s speak to the best-looking one, Pauline,” suggested Molly, as they sauntered along the row of women.
“To the least ugly one, you mean, don’t you?” returned Pauline, casting a scrutinizing glance at the busy workers.
“The least ugly one is that woman straight ahead in the sky-blue apron.”
“She has hair on her chin, Polly.”
“And haven’t they all, or nearly all, youfastidious creature? And isn’t she the only one that looks reconciled to it?” Pauline rattled on. “I think she deserves to be noticed.” And stepping up to the peasant, she made a graceful bow, and said,—
“Bon jour, madame.”
“Bon jour, ma’m’selle,” replied the fish-wife politely, not pausing from her netting. Then nodding toward Donald, she added something about “le joli petit enfant.”
“She seems to be delivering an oration, Molly,” murmured mischievous Pauline with a serious countenance.
“Don’t, Polly, don’t make me laugh in her face,” entreated Molly, her lips twitching. “She said Donald was a pretty little child. I understood as much as that.”
“Pretty? Of course he is, and he’s sweet; but that’s no reason why she should run her words all together like melted caramels,” retorted Pauline, looking straight at thewoman and speaking in an easy, conversational tone.
The woman sat there, serenely unconscious that she was talked about, and Molly had to turn away to hide her merriment. It was one of her minor trials that Pauline could, at almost any time, surprise her into a giggle, while remaining herself as sedate as an owl.
As Molly was looking toward the hotel, she happened to espy the three English girls tripping down the path in Indian file, swinging long towels in their hands.
“They are actually going in bathing,” said Molly, pretending that this was what she was laughing at.
“Iwant to go bavin’,” echoed Donald, hopping up and down on the great loose cobble-stones. “Iwant to go bavin’.”
In his excitement he lost his unsteady footing, and pitching headlong into the fish-net, became entangled in it like a fly in a cobweb.
Molly extricated him as deftly and quickly as she could, though this was a work of time, because he struggled and twisted himself about and kept catching his active little fingers in the meshes.
But the annoying little incident had not diverted the boy in the least from his original desire. He was no sooner free than he repeated emphatically,—
“I say, I want to go bavin’.”
“Not to-day, precious,” answered Molly, smoothing his hair, which the net had tossed this way and that, till the child’s head resembled a thistle gone to seed. “We can’t any of us go into the ocean to-day, not even Kirke. We didn’t bring our bathing-suits with us, you see, Donny.”
Her reply provoked from her little brother a heartrending shriek which drew the three English lassies in haste to his side.
“Poor little fellow, we saw him fall intothat net. Is he dreadfully hurt?” cried the eldest, whom her sisters called Edith.
“It is a dreadful thing to fall into theSeine,” replied Pauline, who never could resist the chance to make a pun.
“No, he was not hurt,” said Molly. “Only in his little feelings, because I can’t let him go in bathing, Miss Edith. We haven’t his bathing-suit here, and if we had, I don’t believe mamma would dare let him go into the sea.”
“Wouldn’t she allow him to take off his shoes and stockings and wade in the shallow water?” asked kind Miss Edith, wishing to see the grieving child happy.
“Mamma would, mamma would,” piped Donald, taking it upon himself to answer the question.
“Do you think so, little sailor?”
Miss Edith caressingly touched the embroidered anchor upon the collar of his navy-blue jacket, and turning to Molly said,—
“Because I know of a nice, shallow pool where little ones often wade. It is over there between those two rocks near the foot of the chalk cliffs.”
“Thank you, Miss Edith, you’re very kind to tell us about it,” replied Molly, wiping Donald’s eyes, again beginning to twinkle. “You are sure it is perfectly safe?”
“Oh, yes, it’s so far from the sea that the waves never wash into it except at high tide.”
This was all true; and thinking she had done a kindness to the young Americans, Miss Edith gave them a pleasant nod and followed her sisters to the bath-house lower down the beach, to prepare for a plunge into the ocean.