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Page 33
"How can a fellow? She blushes just as much when he speaks to her as
when I do."
"But are you quite sure," I asked delicately, "whether Mr. Mafferton
is--interested?"
"There's the worst kind of danger of it," Dicky replied impressively. "I
don't know whether I ought to tell you, but the fact is Mafferton's just
got the sack--I beg your pardon--just been _cong�ed_ himself. They say
she was an American and it was a bad case; she behaved most
unfeelingly."
"You shouldn't believe all you hear," I said, "but I don't see what that
has to do with it."
"Why, he's just in the mood to console himself. What fellow would think
twice of being thrown over, if Miss Portheris were the alternative!"
"It depends, Dicky," I observed. "You are jumping at conclusions."
"What I hoped," he went on regretfully as we took our places in the
elevator, "was that we might travel together a bit and that you wouldn't
mind just now and then taking old Mafferton off our hands, you know."
"Dicky," I said, as we swiftly descended, "here is our itinerary.
Genoa, you see, then Pisa, Rome, Naples, Rome again, Florence, Venice,
Verona, up through the lakes to Switzerland, and so on. We leave
to-morrow. If we _should_ meet again, I don't promise to undertake it
personally, but I'll see what momma can do."
[Illustration: Breakfast with Dicky Dod.]
CHAPTER VIII.
Poppa said as we steamed out of Paris that night that the Presidency
itself would not induce him to reside there, and I think he meant it. I
don't know whether the omnibus _numeros_ and the _correspondances_ where
you change, or the men sitting staring on the side walks drinking things
for hours at a time, or getting no vegetables to speak of with his
joint, annoyed him most, but he was very decided in his views. Momma and
I were not quite so certain; we had a guilty sense of ingratitude when
we thought of the creations in the van; but the cobblestones biassed
momma a good deal, who hoped she should get some sleep in Italy. I had
breakfasted that morning in the most amusing way with Dicky Dod at a
_caf�_ in the Champs Elys�es--poppa and momma had an engagement with Mr.
and Mrs. Malt and couldn't come--and in the leniency of the recollection
I said something favourable about the Arc de Triomphe at sunset; but I
gathered from the Senator's remarks that, while the sunset was fine
enough, he didn't see the propriety in using it that way as a background
for Napoleon Bonaparte, so to speak.
"Result is," said the Senator, "the intelligent foreigner's got pretty
nearly to go out of the town to see a sunset without having to think
about Aboukir and Alexandria. But that's Paris all over. There isn't a
street, or a public building, or a statue, or a fountain, or a thing
that doesn't shout at you, 'Look at me! Think about me! Your admiration
or your life!' Those Frenchmen don't mind it because it only repeats
what they're always saying themselves, but if you're a foreigner it gets
on your nerves. That city is too uniformly fine to be of much use to
me--it keeps me all the time wondering why I'm not in one eternal good
humour to match. There's good old London now--always looks, I should
think, just as you feel. Looks like history, too, and change, and
contrast, and the different varieties of the human lot."
"I see what you mean, poppa," I said. "There's too much equality in
Paris, isn't there--to be interesting," but the Senator was too deeply
engaged in getting out momma's smelling salts to corroborate this
interpretation.
It is a very long way to Genoa if you don't stop at Aix-les-Bains or
anywhere--twenty-four hours--but Mont Cenis occurs in the night, which
is suitable in a tunnel. There came a chill through the darkness that
struck to one's very marrow, and we all rose with one accord and groped
about for more rugs. When broad daylight came it was Savoy, and we
realised what we had been through. The Senator was inclined to deplore
missing the realisation of the Mont Cenis, and it was only when momma
said it was a pity he hadn't taken a train that would have brought us
through in the daytime and enabled him to examine it, that he ceased to
express regret. My parents are often vehicles of philosophy for each
other.
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