"I don't know, but it surely is."
"Well," said Alaric, finally convinced that his comrade was right, "that is the very most unexplainable thing I ever came across, for I don't see how it could possibly have come into his possession."
While discussing this strange happening, the lads approached the hotel in which one of them had been made to suffer so keenly a few hours before. He dreaded the very thought of entering it again, but having made up his mind that he must, was about to do so, when his attention was attracted to a curious scene in front of the main entrance.
A small, wiry-looking man, evidently a foreigner, was gesticulating, stamping, and shouting to a group of grinning porters and bell-boys who were gathered about him. As our lads drew near they saw that he held a small open book in his hand, from which he was quoting some sentence, while at the same time he was rapidly working himself into a fury. It was a French-English phrase-book, in which, under the head of instructions to servants, the sentence "Je désire un fiacre" was rendered "Call me a hansom," and it was this that the excited Frenchman was demanding, greatly to the amusement and mystification of his hearers.
"Call me a hansom! Call me a hansom! Call me a hansom!" he repeated over and over, at the top of his voice. "C'est un fiacre—fiacre—fiacre!" he shouted. "Oh, là, là! Mille tonnerres! Call me a hansom!"
"He must be crazy," said Bonny; "for he certainly isn't handsome, and even if he were, he couldn't expect people to call him so. I wonder why they don't send for the police."
Instead of answering him, Alaric stepped up to the laughing group and said, politely, "Pardon, monsieur. C'est Monsieur Filbert, n'est-ce pas?"
"Oui, oui. Je suis Filbert! Call me a hansom."
"He wants a carriage," explained Alaric to the porters, who stared open-mouthed at hearing this young tramp talk to the foreigner in his own "lingo."
"Vous voulez une voiture, n'est-ce pas?" he added, turning to the stranger.