Jessica interrupted here.
"I beg your pardon," she asked, earnestly, "but—have you really been travelling two nights and sight-seeing two days in that fearful crush at Lourdes without any sleep?"
Our new friend nodded slowly, as one to whose attention the matter had just been directed. "Why, yes, that's so," she conceded. "But I ain't a bit tired. Old folks don't need much sleep, you know, an' I'm pretty old. I was eighty-one last June."
Jessica dropped her pillow and sat up very straight, a slight flush upon her face. Our new friend prattled on until the lights of Paris appeared in the distance, and Jessica and I began to collect the impressive array of impedimenta with which we had thoughtfully multiplied the discomfort of travel. As we pulled down packages of rugs and tightened various straps the bright eyes of the little old woman watched us unswervingly through her spectacles. Grasping firmly a stout and serviceable umbrella, she was ready to disembark. If she had brought any baggage with her, which I doubted, it was evidently in the fostering care of Mr. James George Jackson.
"What hotel are you goin' to?" she asked, suddenly. "I know a real good one."
I told her it was the St. James et D'Albany, and her wrinkled face grew radiant.
"Well, now, I declare," she cried, heartily, "ain't that nice! That's jest where we're stayin', an' I'm as comfor'ble as I can be. I got a room with a window that looks right into the Twilry Gardens. Mr. Jackson says that I must have the best they is, because I'm the oldest. 'Age before beauty,' he says, an' none of the other ladies minds a bit. They certainly are good to me. Of course, I don't say 't I wouldn't like a more relishin' breakfast, because I would; an' I ain't got used to that waiter man comin' right into my room with his trays before I'm out of my bed, an' I never expect to. But 'tis a good hotel, an' the lady that runs it is real nice, if she is French."
The train swung into the great station as she spoke, and a round, perspiring, and very grimy masculine face presented itself at the door of our compartment.
"Well, Aunt Nancy," said the owner of this, with a sprightly effort at cheerfulness, "you alive yet? The rest of us are dead. You come right along with me now, and I'll whisk you up to the hotel in a cab. And if you take my advice, you'll go to bed and stay there for two days, after this experience."
He tucked the old lady under his arm as he spoke, and she trotted off with him in high good-humor, turning several times to nod and smile at us as she departed.