“Comment!” he bristled at her English. “The sky, it is all of French! Aujourd’hui,” flourishing terribly at the sky, “il s’agit de parler français!”
“Please, Bardek!” she begged. “Not French now; after while; not now. Please!”
“Comme tu voudras, petite,” he gave in finally. “She will not speak the French, which she speak like—oh!—like heaven. C’est très curieux! She is afraid, Mr. Blynn, that you be critic. Ho!” laughed Bardek frankly. “She need have not the fear. Pssst! Mr. Blynn, he can have no language but the English. And even so, the little English of a little town,” pointing off toward the village, “a little town which goes to sleep on Sundays. It is too late for him. Language, it comes to children when their ears are open wide to hear the voice of things. When we grow old, sixteen, twenty, thirty—malheureusement! Peau du diable!—it is too late. The bones in the head, they go thick. So with all things—after fourteen, fifteen, the mind est fermé, closed, shut up tight.”
Gorgas was searching in the tent for her materials.
“So, I take this child when she is child and teach her. You are professor, n’est-ce pas? Oh! You have my great admiration! You are—pardon!—so great a fool! You think you can teach old men and old girls who go to the university? How that is comic! Wooden-heads, they mumble words; they can repeat what you say, yes; but they can never do. To do, one must begin in the cradle. You would be contortionist, juggler, gymnast? Very well, wait until you are twenty-five! Sh! Non! You laugh? Zen why you try to teach old men of twenty how to think? It is a great fooling.... Oh, well,” he shrugged, “zey zink,” he stopped and tried again, “t’hey t’hink they do great zings—t’ings—bla!” he made a wry face. “I cannot say zat ‘th.’ It is one language for those who stutter, the English.”
Bardek was all French on that day. One could almost believe that he had really changed his skin. He seemed sleeker, cleaner, even thinner; and the great mustachios had a glisten to them and a slight waxiness in the ends. His bearing was more courteous and considerate than on the “Deutschertag.” A gay kerchief adorned his neck and his turkey-feather had a jaunty tilt. Even his English had the very flavor of French idiom and French accent.
While he talked Gorgas brought her plate to a great stone, set up a lead block, and began to swing a rather large coppersmith’s hammer. She barely touched the metal as she beat rhythmically back and forth; the weight of the hammer seemed to disappear, so cleverly did she keep it moving.
“V’là!” pointed Bardek. “That is the stroke of G’sepp’ G’ovan’ Varri. Parfaitment! C’est bon! ‘Tap, tap, tippity, tippity, tap, tap!’ It is music, is it not, m’sieur? She has the delicate muscle for that work. Two year, three year? Non! She will soon set—be woman and marry and have hundred t’ousand children. Ho!—”
Gorgas looked up at him in grave rebuke.
“Ho! see how she goes red and charming! The little maggots are running in her brain and making to wake all kind of wonder things and then—poof!—the school is done and life commence.”