‘My hat!’ he breathed. ‘We don’t know any French!’
At this moment the door opened. A very tall, lean lady, with pale ringlets like whitey-brown paper or oak shavings, stood before them. She had an ugly grey dress and a black silk apron. Her eyes were small and grey and not pretty, and the rims were red, as though she had been crying.
She addressed the party in something that sounded like a foreign language, and ended with something which they were sure was a question. Of course, no one could answer it.
‘What does she say?’ Robert asked, looking down into the hollow of his jacket, where the Phoenix was nestling. But before the Phoenix could answer, the whitey-brown lady’s face was lighted up by a most charming smile.
‘You—you ar-r-re fr-r-rom the England!’ she cried. ‘I love so much the England. Mais entrez—entrez donc tous! Enter, then—enter all. One essuyes his feet on the carpet.’ She pointed to the mat.
‘We only wanted to ask—’
‘I shall say you all that what you wish,’ said the lady. ‘Enter only!’
So they all went in, wiping their feet on a very clean mat, and putting the carpet in a safe corner of the veranda.
‘The most beautiful days of my life,’ said the lady, as she shut the door, ‘did pass themselves in England. And since long time I have not heard an English voice to repeal me the past.’
This warm welcome embarrassed every one, but most the boys, for the floor of the hall was of such very clean red and white tiles, and the floor of the sitting-room so very shiny—like a black looking-glass—that each felt as though he had on far more boots than usual, and far noisier.