“Well, m’ friend, you can sting me!” he interrupted with condescending jocularity. “My style French does f’r them camels up in Paris all right. ME at Nice, Monte Carlo, Chantilly—bow to the p’fess’r; he’s RIGHT! But down here I don’t seem to be GUD enough f’r these sheep-dogs; anyway they bark different. I’m lukkin’ fer a hotel called Les Trois Pigeons.”
“I am going there,” I said; “I will show you the way.”
“Whur is’t?” he asked, not moving.
I pointed to the lights of the inn, flickering across the fields. “Yonder—beyond the second turn of the road,” I said, and, as he showed no signs of accompanying me, I added, “I am rather late.”
“Oh, I ain’t goin’ there t’night. It’s too dark t’ see anything now,” he remarked, to my astonishment. “Dives and the choo-choo back t’ little ole Trouville f’r mine! I on’y wanted to take a LUK at this pigeon-house joint.”
“Do you mind my inquiring,” I said, “what you expected to see at Les Trois Pigeons?”
“Why!” he exclaimed, as if astonished at the question, “I’m a tourist. Makin’ a pedestrun trip t’ all the reg’ler sights.” And, inspired to eloquence, he added, as an afterthought: “As it were.”
“A tourist?” I echoed, with perfect incredulity.
“That’s whut I am, m’ friend,” he returned firmly. “You don’t have to have a red dope-book in one hand and a thoid-class choo-choo ticket in the other to be a tourist, do you?”
“But if you will pardon me,” I said, “where did you get the notion that Les Trois Pigeons is one of the regular sights?”