"Shake! It's God's own land!" and he disappeared in the throng.
The next morning I was taking my coffee in the cafe at the Britannia,
when I caught a pair of black eyes peering over a cup, at a table
opposite. Then six feet and an inch or two of raw untilled American
rose in the air, picked up his plates, cup, and saucer, and, crossing
the room, hooked out a chair with his left foot from my table, and sat
down.
"You're the painter feller that helped me out of a hole yesterday?
Yes, I knowed it; I see you come in to dinner last night. Eliza-beth
said it was you, but you was so almighty rigged up in that
swallow-tailed coat of yourn I didn't catch on for a minute, but
Eliza-beth said she was dead sure."
"The lady with you--your wife?"
[Illustration: "HER HEAD CRAMMED FULL OF HIFALUTIN' NOTIONS"]
"Not to any alarming extent, young man. Never had one--she's my
sister--only one I got; and this summer she took it into her head--you
don't mind my setting here, do you? I'm so durned lonesome among these
jabbering Greeks I'm nearly froze stiff. Thank ye!--took it into her
head she'd come over here, and of course I had to bring her. You ain't
never traveled around, perhaps, with a young girl of fifty-five, with
her head crammed full of hifalutin' notions,--convents and early
masters and Mont Blancs and Bon Marches,--with just enough French to
make a muddle of everything she wants to get. Well, that's Eliza-beth.
First it was a circulating library, at Unionville, back of Troy, where
I live; then come a course of lectures twice a week on old Edinburgh
and the Alps and German cities; and then, to cap all, there come a
cuss with magic-lantern slides of 'most every old ruin in Europe, and
half our women were crazy to get away from home, and Eliza-beth worse
than any of 'em; and so I got a couple of Cook's tickets out and back,
and here we are; and I don't mind saying," and a wicked, vindictive
look filled his eyes, "that of all the cussed holes I ever got into in
my life, this here Venice takes--the--cake. Here, John Henry, bring me
another cup of coffee; this's stone-cold. P.D.Q., now! Don't let me
have to build a fire under you." This to a waiter speaking every
language but English.
"Do not the palaces interest you?" I asked inquiringly, in my effort
to broaden his views.
"Palaces be durned! Excuse my French. Palaces! A lot of caved-in old
rookeries; with everybody living on the second floor because the first
one's so damp ye'd get your die-and-never-get-over-it if you lived in
the basement, and the top floors so leaky that you go to bed under an
umbrella; and they all braced up with iron clamps to keep 'em from
falling into the canal, and not a square inch on any one of 'em clean
enough to dry a shirt on! What kind of holes are they for decent----
Now see here," laying his hand confidingly on my shoulder, "just
answer me one question--you seem like a level-headed young man, and
ought to give it to me straight. Been here all summer, ain't you?"
"Yes."
"Been coming years, ain't you?"