"Well, follow me, little ones, and we shall find something," he said, and led the way down the street, gay with flags, wreaths, and flowers.
"Just one moment, uncle," cried Marie, "let us stop and buy some post-cards to send home."
"It will be better," said Uncle Daboll, "to get them after dinner, and while we are having our coffee at a café we can write them and send them off. If we stop now, we shall be late for dinner, for it is past noon."
"Here is our place for dinner," he continued, as they entered a small square surrounded by old-time houses near the river. On one side was a modest little hotel called the "Three Merchants." Going up an outside stairway, they entered a small room with a low ceiling and a stone floor, with a long table down the centre.
It was a typical place for the farmers to come for their dinners when they brought their produce into the markets. Some of these farmers were now sitting at the table with blue or black blouses over their broadcloth suits, with their wives in black dresses and white caps, all talking and gesticulating away over their dinner.
There were two pleasant-faced curés in their long, tight black gowns closely buttoned up the front, the brims of their flat black hats caught up on either side with a cord, who had evidently come in from some country parish to see the fêtes. There was also a solitary bicyclist whose costume betrayed the fact that he was a Frenchman, for no other bicyclists in the world get themselves up in so juvenile a manner as do the French. A loose black alpaca coat, a broad waistband in which was sewed his purse, baggy knickerbockers of gray plaid, and socks with low shoes, leaving the leg bare to the knee, completed his marvellous costume.
You would think this a little boy's dress in America, would you not?
These were the guests to whom our party nodded, which is a polite and universal French custom when entering and leaving a room where others are, even though they may be unknown to you.
After a bountiful middle-class dinner, our party passed out into the crowded streets again, when the energetic Jean exclaimed: "Now for our post-cards!"