I have a French book for travellers in France, so with it I went to a
farm and showed them that I wanted eggs. So they said, “Ah, wee.” The
man got a whip and bunched all the chickens together, and then told me
to pick one out. I tried to make him understand it was eggs I wanted,
not chickens, but failed. So I got an onion, put it on some straw, sat
on it, and then got up and “Cock-a-doodle-dooed!” Laugh, you would have
thought they had gone mad. They went to the farm next door and told
them, and there I was stuck in the middle of them, going all colours of
the rainbow. The secret of it was this; in the book it says: “English,
I would like two boiled eggs; French, _Je veux deux œufs à la coque._”
I showed them the last word, which I thought was eggs, but eggs is
_œufs_. Well, well, it’s all in a lifetime: _A London Fusilier_.