THE MYSTERIOUS BAG
The Silver 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--or _le café_--consisted of _café 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 escape from 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. French _cochers_ are
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,--
“_Will_ you 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 the _cocher_,” 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. “_We_ are not one bit 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 the _fleur-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.
“_Her_ dairy? The dairy of the whole neighborhood, more likely,” said
Paul.
“A _cow_-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 rude cottages, 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, you fastidious 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 the woman 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.
“_I_ want to go bavin’,” echoed Donald, hopping up and down on the
great loose cobble-stones. “_I_ want 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 into that net. Is he dreadfully
hurt?” cried the eldest, whom her sisters called Edith.
“It is a dreadful thing to fall into the _Seine_,” 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.