I have lived so long away from the world that, for all I know, this ancient British type, this "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," may have become extinct, like another, but less unprepossessing bird—the dodo; whereby our state is the more gracious.
But in those days, and generalizing somewhat hastily as young people are apt to do, we grew to think that England must be full of Prendergasts, and did not want to go there.
To this universal English beastliness of things we made a few exceptions, it is true, but the list was not long: tea, mustard, pickles, gingerbread-nuts, and, of all things in the world, the English loaf of household bread that came to us once a week as a great treat and recompense for our virtues, and harmonized so well with Passy butter. It was too delicious! But there was always a difficulty, a dilemma—whether to eat it with butter alone, or with "cassonade" (French brown sugar) added.
Mimsey knew her own mind, and loved it with French brown sugar, and if she were not there I would save for her half of my slices, and carefully cassonade them for her myself.
On the other hand, we thought everything French the reverse of beastly—except all the French boys we knew, and at M. Saindou's there were about two hundred; then there were all the boys in Passy (whose name was legion, and who did not go to M. Saindou's), and we knew all the boys in Passy. So that we were not utterly bereft of material for good, stodgy, crusty, patriotic English prejudice.
Nor did the French boys fail to think us beastly in return, and sometimes to express the thought; especially the little vulgar boys, whose playground was the street—the voyous de Passy. They hated our white silk chimney-pot hats and large collars and Eton jackets, and called us "sacred godems," as their ancestors used to call ours in the days of Joan of Arc. Sometimes they would throw stones, and then there were collisions, and bleedings of impertinent little French noses, and runnings away of cowardly little French legs, and dreadful wails of "O là, là! O, là, là—maman!" when they were overtaken by English ones.
Not but what our noses were made to bleed now and then, unvictoriously, by a certain blacksmith—always the same young blacksmith—Boitard!
It is always a young blacksmith who does these things—or a young butcher.
Of course, for the honor of Great Britain, one of us finally licked him to such a tune that he has never been able to hold up his head since. It was about a cat. It came off at dusk, one Christmas Eve, on the "Isle of Swans," between Passy and Grenelle (too late to save the cat).
I was the hero of this battle. "It's now or never," I thought, and saw scarlet, and went for my foe like a maniac. The ring was kept by Alfred and Charlie helped, oddly enough, by a couple of male Prendergasts, who so far forgot themselves as to take an interest in the proceedings. Madge and Mimsey looked on, terrified and charmed.