The Commodore repeated the sentence. Same effect.
"Ne comprens pas."
Another trial with some changes of structure and pronunciation.
"M'sieu, we no speak Anglais."
The Commodore went his way to the next house, half a mile distant, and protected by a black dog of great apparent enterprise. Interview substantially duplicated.
At the third house the discovery was made that the Alderman's information as to the pronunciation of "lait" was erroneous.
Pronouncing the word in usual manner he was readily understood, but there was no milk to be had. So he paddled over to the island again and approached the somewhat "swell" mansion of the proprietor, which had been shunned in the first instance because the occupants of such mansions not infrequently scorn the advances of canoeists in the direction of supplies. Ascending a footpath from the landing, the Commodore found himself before a square brick house standing in the midst of forest trees, many being superb specimens of spruce and balsam, which sent their perfect spires of green sixty or seventy feet upward. The underbrush had been cleared away, so that a somewhat broken lawn spread from the house to the edge of the bluff, and through the tree-trunks there opened an expanse of rich meadow-land dotted with cottages crossed by lines of dark coniferous woods, and backed by the blue Belœil range. Lost in the contemplation of the delicious landscape, the Commodore was for a time merged in the love of nature, but a rude interruption was in store for him. No sign of human life had been visible when he turned his back upon the house and became absorbed in the contemplation of the beautiful, but a sudden bark rang upon the air and was instantly taken up, as it seemed from all parts of the island. The case of James Fitzjames and the ambuscaded Highlanders flashed through his mind as a parallel one:
A Charming Landscape.