Cynthia waited patiently, but as the other seemed in no haste to relinquish her place at the window, the American finally leaned over the French girl’s shoulder and beckoned in similar fashion. The long train slid gently to a stop and a score of stout little blue smocked men seemed to spring from the ground and began taking baggage from the open windows, loading it on wide straps over their sturdy shoulders.
Cynthia captured the eye of number 972; a beady eye above a red nose and a moustache that would have graced a member of the Beggar’s Opera. She gulped, “Taxi!”—thank goodness, there was a word that meant the same in several languages, at which he grinned cheerfully and slung her heavy suitcase and her paint box in one huge paw. The other grasped her neighbor’s bags and the whole strange and unwieldy combination lumbered off down the platform. Was he gone for good? Better follow that French girl, Cynthia decided. She seemed unconcerned. Oh, one had to give up the ticket here, and there was the porter again. No more customs, that had all been cleared at the quay, earlier in the morning.
The street met her with a blast of warm July air, a dazzle of summer sunlight and such a medley of strange noises: taxis hooting in a new, high key; shrill-pitched voices, mingled shouts and confusion, that she stood for a moment bewildered and lost. Horrid luck that no one she knew from the boat had been coming to Paris on this train!
Then Cynthia saw that her bag and paint box had been piled into a taxi like a shiny black beetle and the blue smocked one waited for his pourboire. She tipped him ten francs. Was that too much, or too little? She had been warned that, in either case, he would glare, but this one smiled, muttered, “Merci!” and departed. The hotel address was written on a card and Cynthia had only to show that to the driver, hop in, and they were off.
“Well!”
“Well, so this is Paris!”
“Well ...,” Cynthia giggled nervously. To be really here. To have arrived safely, all by herself. Well, that was something. “Paris!”
She sighed, relaxed back against the cushions and closed her eyes for a moment. Oh, the taxi was stopping. Her eyes popped open. Just a little policeman in a toy soldier cape and a white stick with which he seemed, miraculously, to hold up this mad traffic. Off again. She shut her eyes once more. New smells, hot asphalt, violets, damp warm air, something cooking, other things. She just couldn’t keep her eyes shut.
The car was running along gray cobbles between gray houses high and incredibly ancient. Tall, plane trees leaned out over gray walls that held in a silvery stream. The Seine! A little gay colored steamer, like a miniature ferry-boat, hooted and put off from a landing. Cynthia wanted to hug it all at once, to pinch herself to be sure she was here. How she wished Judy could see it, and Chick, dear Chick. This was to have been their honeymoon. He’d be over shortly, a few weeks at the most. And meanwhile there was work to be done; a language to learn, Nancy and Mrs. Brewster to see, and covers to be done for Little One’s Magazine.
Was that, could that possibly be, Notre Dame over there to the left? And the Eiffel Tower clear ahead, misty against sunny sky? She had seen it as they came in on the train. Really Paris!