The Frenchman looked puzzled for a moment, but with a foreigner’s intuitive cleverness be guessed at the gist of the question. “Ah, yase! you vant to know son retour? Cee go walk mit monsieur. Cee go joost now à huit heures, and cee will retour byanby, à neuf heures, noine clock. Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf”—he said, counting on his fingers—“o’cloke!”
“Ooo!” said the doctor, giving a satisfied nod, “I understand, she will be back again at nine o’clock,” holding up nine of his fingers in proof. “I—am—much—obliged—to—you,—I—will—come back again—at nine!”
“Ah-h, yase! Dat is raite. You will retour?”
“Yes, I’ll come back again!” said the doctor, as he walked away, after both had bowed politely to each other, and the Gaul had entreated him to accept a hundred thousand assurances of his extreme subserviency.
“Confound those stoopid foreigners!” muttered the doctor, as he walked up the street in the direction of Ingouville, to pass the time. “Confound those stoopid foreigners! Why, that fellow could have said all that in half the time in English.”
Volume Two—Chapter Fifteen.
“End of Second Act.”
The engulfment of the last straw on which he, the drowning man, had leant his weight, left Markworth without a single loophole of escape: he did not know where to turn.