“Well, but what is a cochon?” asked Ned.
“It’s either a pig or a coachman,” said Bob, desperately. “That’s the trouble. I’m not sure which. I forget whether cocher is pig or whether it’s coachman, and I don’t know whether cochon is coachman or pig. I know it’s one or the other, but just now I sort of forget.”
“A heap of good your French does us!” laughed Jerry. “If she said he was a coachman it might mean he was a respectable, though humble, member of society. If, on the other hand, she called him a pig, it might mean he had something to do with starting this war. Now which is it?”
Bob scratched his head again. Plainly, he was “stumped.”
“I’ll ask her again when she comes back,” he said. “I wish I had my French book here. I sort of think that cochon means pig, and, in that case——”
“Well, he certainly acted like a pig, so we’ll let it go at that,” declared Jerry. “The idea of getting on his ear just because we happened to mistake him for Professor Snodgrass!”
“And he did look a lot like him from the back,” declared Ned.
“Sure,” assented Bob. “I wonder where the dear old chap is, anyhow? I wish he were going back with us.”
“Not much chance of that,” said Jerry. “He said he’d like to, and he really started back, but he received word to take up some other line of scientific investigation before he left to go back to Boxwood Hall, and you can wager your last cartridge that he’ll do it. But this man seems to have some sort of grudge against him, taking us up the way he did.”
“That’s right,” agreed Ned. “Say, Bob, you’ll have to tackle your friend Marie again. See if you can’t find out more about this duck.”