OVERHEARD EVERYWHERE.
I.
"How are yours getting on?"
"Oh, all right."
"How many rooms do you give them?"
"A sitting-room and two bedrooms."
"I wish we could. We have no spare sitting-room. They have meals with you, I suppose?"
"Lunch and dinner, yes."
"Do they know any English?"
"Devil a word."
"Do you know any French?"
"Precious little. But Norah does—some. I say, what does 'chin-chin' mean?"
"'Chin-chin'? Isn't that what some fellows say before they drink?"
"Well, it can't be that. Madame says it at intervals all the time her husband is talking."
"Oh, you mean 'Tiens, tiens,' don't you?"
"Perhaps. What does it mean, anyway?"
"It's just an exclamation like 'Really' or 'Just think of that!'"
"Thank Heaven I know! You've taken a terrible load off my mind."
"Do they eat much?"
"Well, I should call their appetites healthy."
"Same with ours. But it's all right. I shouldn't mind if they ate twice as much."
II.
"Do yours do anything?"
"Monsieur is an artist. Madame mends lace beautifully."
"What does he paint?"
"Well, he hasn't painted anything yet, but he says he's an artist. He looks like one. He goes to the National Gallery."
"Why don't you ask him to paint one of the children?"
"My dear, they're terrified of him! They won't come into the room."
III.
"Are you having an easy time with yours?"
"Moderate. Only Jack behaves so badly. After every meal Monsieur always begins a long speech about their indebtedness to us and all the rest of it, and Jack will walk out in the middle."
"What do you talk about?"
"Well, for the most part about the terrible privations before they got away. But now and then they will tell risqué stories. More than risqué—really shocking. Jack does his best to get them off it, but he never succeeds. They seem to think we expect it."
"Oh, ours aren't a bit like that. The trouble with ours is that they hate going out. They sit tight indoors from morning to night."
"Can't you lure them out?"
"Well, I tell them what a wonderful place the British Museum is; but it's no use."
IV.
"Every evening during dinner Madame tells us how she walked from Louvain. Poor creature, she's not slender, and she had to walk mile after mile for eight hours. It must have been dreadful. But she won't remember that we've heard it all before. Everything reminds her of it. We're terrified to speak, Andrew and I, for fear some little tiny word will suggest walking from Louvain, and it always does.... Poor thing, though!"
