“Ain’t it in all the books?”
“I don’t think that it is mentioned in any of the guide-books.”
“NO! I didn’t say it WAS, m’ friend,” he retorted with contemptuous pity. “I mean them history-books. It’s in all o’ THEM!”
“This is strange news,” said I. “I should be very much interested to read them!”
“Lookahere,” he said, taking a step nearer me; “in oinest now, on your woid: Didn’ more’n half them Jeanne d’Arc tamales live at that hotel wunst?”
“Nobody of historical importance—or any other kind of importance, so far as I know—ever lived there,” I informed him. “The older portions of the inn once belonged to an ancient farm-house, that is all.”
“On the level,” he demanded, “didn’t that William the Conker nor NONE o’ them ancient gilt-edges live there?”
“No.”
“Stung again!” He broke into a sudden loud cackle of laughter. “Why! the feller tole me ‘at this here Pigeon place was all three rings when it come t’ history. Yessir! Tall, thin feller he was, in a three-button cutaway, English make, and kind of red-complected, with a sandy MUS-tache,” pursued the pedestrian, apparently fearing his narrative might lack colour. “I met him right comin’ out o’ the Casino at Trouville, yes’day aft’noon; c’udn’ a’ b’en more’n four o’clock—hol’ on though, yes ‘twas, ‘twas nearer five, about twunty minutes t’ five, say—an’ this feller tells me—” He cackled with laughter as palpably disingenuous as the corroborative details he thought necessary to muster, then he became serious, as if marvelling at his own wondrous verdancy. “M’ friend, that feller soitn’y found me easy. But he can’t say I ain’t game; he passes me the limes, but I’m jest man enough to drink his health fer it in this sweet, sound ole-fashioned cider ‘at ain’t got a headache in a barrel of it. He played me GUD, and here’s TO him!”
Despite the heartiness of the sentiment, my honest tourist’s enthusiasm seemed largely histrionic, and his quaffing of the beaker too reminiscent of drain-the-wine-cup-free in the second row of the chorus, for he absently allowed it to dangle from his hand before raising it to his lips. However, not all of its contents was spilled, and he swallowed a mouthful of the sweet, sound, old-fashioned cider—but by mistake, I was led to suppose, from the expression of displeasure which became so deeply marked upon his countenance as to be noticeable, even in the feeble lamplight.