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Page 26
"Oh dear yes, Mrs. Malt!" interrupted momma, who thought everything
entomological extremely indelicate. "Perfectly. You have only to go to
the hotels the guide-books recommend, and everything will be quite
_propre_."
"Well," said Emmeline, "they may be _propre_ in Italy, but they're not
_propre_ in Paris. We had to speak to the housemaid yesterday morning,
didn't we, mother? Don't you remember the back of my neck?"
"We all suffered!" declared Mrs. Malt.
"And I _showed_ one to her, mother, and all she would say was, '_Jamais
ici, mademoiselle, ici, jamais!_' And there it _was_ you know."
"Emmeline," said her father, "isn't it about time for you to want to go
to bed?"
"Not by about three hours. I'm going to get up a little music first. Do
you play, Mis' Wick?"
Momma said she didn't, and Miss Malt disappeared in search of other
performers. "Don't you go asking strangers to play, Emmeline," her
mother called after her. "They'll think it forward of you."
"When Emmeline leaves us," said her father, "I always have a kind of
abandoned feeling, like a top that's got to the end of its spin."
There was silence for a moment, and then the Senator said he thought he
could understand that.
"Well," continued Mr. Malt, "you've had three whole days now. I presume
you're beginning to know your way around."
"I think we may say we've made pretty good use of our time," responded
the Senator. "This morning we had a look in at the Luxembourg picture
gallery, and the Madeleine, and Napoleon's Tomb, and the site of the
Bastile. This afternoon we took a run down to Notre Dame Cathedral.
That's a very fine building, sir."
"You saw the Morgue, of course, when you were in that direction,"
remarked Mr. Malt.
"Why no," poppa confessed, "we haven't taken much of liking for live
Frenchmen, up to the present, and I don't suppose dead ones would be any
more attractive."
"Oh, there's nothing unpleasant," said Mrs. Malt, "nothing that you can
_notice_."
"Nothing at all," said Mr. Malt. "They refrigerate them, you know. We
send our beef to England by the same process----"
"There are people," the Senator interrupted, "who never can see anything
amusing in a corpse."
"They don't let you in as a matter of course," Mr. Malt went on. "You
have to pretend that you're looking for a relation."
"We had to mention Uncle Sammy," said Mrs. Malt.
"An uncle of Mis' Malt's who went to California in '49 and was never
heard of afterward," Mr. Malt explained. "First use he's ever been to
his family. Well, there they were, seven of 'em, lying there looking at
you yesterday. All in good condition. I was told they have a place
downstairs for the older ones."
"Alexander," said momma faintly, "I think I _should_ like a little
brandy in my coffee. Were there--were there any ladies among them, Mr.
Malt?"
"Three," Mr. Malt responded briskly, "and one of them had her hair----"
"Then _please_ don't tell us about them," momma exclaimed, and the
silence that ensued was one of slight indignation on the part of the
Malt family.
"You been seeing the town at all, evenings?" Mr. Malt inquired of the
Senator.
"I can't say I have. We've been seeing so much of it in the daytime, we
haven't felt able to enjoy anything at night except our beds," poppa
returned with his accustomed candour.
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