“Holy Saints! Cook here! in the show kitchen!”
She put down, with crushing emphasis, a fresh table-napkin, a small blunt knife, a silver fork, and a silver spoon—all à la française. This was luxury as compared with recent experiences. Ned looked serious over the knife. He did not know that French meat stewed to the melting-point dismembers itself at a touch.
He had a very succulent salmis; and no fewer than four hot eggs, cuddled in a white clout, were served to him.
“Am I to devour them all?” he asked of the girl.
“With the help of God,” she answered ambiguously, in her soft Picardian.
By-and-by madame l’hôtesse condescended to come and talk with him while he ate. She was veritably chargée de cuisine; she seemed to fill the place, width and height.
“What is your condition in your own country?” she asked, with fat asperity.
“I am grand-nephew to a monseigneur, to whose title and estates I shall succeed.”
“Vraigment!” she clucked incredulously. “How arrives it, then, that you ‘pad the hoof’ like a colporteur?”
“I travel for discipline and for experience, madame. Wisdom is not an heirloom.”