"We can try it; but I know the telephone will be out of order. It always is. I never knew a Paris telephone that wasn't."
Sure enough, when they tried to telephone, after much delay and many unsuccessful attempts, they were informed that there was some difficulty with the wires and that connection with the Farrington house was impossible.
The girls returned to their post at the glass-doored entrance and stood looking out with a discouraged air. Still no car appeared that they could recognise as their own.
At last Patty said: "There's no use, Elise, in standing here any longer. Jules has absconded, or been kidnapped, or something. Now, I'll tell you what we'll do. Let's take a cab over to this perfumery place and back again, and then if Jules isn't here waiting for us we'll go right home in the same cab. I know your mother doesn't let us go in a cab alone, but this is an emergency, and we have to get home somehow; and while we're about it we may as well go over to the perfumery place. It isn't very far."
"How do you know it isn't far?"
"Because I know a lot about Paris now, and I know the names of the streets, and I know just about where it is, and of course the cabman will know. We can talk French to him and we can act very dignified, and anyway we'll be back here in fifteen or twenty minutes, so come on."
Elise was a little doubtful about the matter, but she yielded to Patty's argument and they went out in the street. Patty stopped a passing cab, and giving the driver the address, the girls got in.
As they rolled smoothly along Patty's spirits rose. "You see, we did just the right thing," she said; "and we'll be back there now before Jules is."
On they went, across the Seine and into a strange district, unlike any they had ever seen before.
But it was not long before they came to the address written on the paper. The girls went into the shop and found to their dismay that the perfumery company was there no longer, but had moved some time since to another address.