“Shoo, that’s no big job. I looked over and verified this one myself yesterday in ten minutes. Hello, this other one is in French. Just run it through and if it is to tally, call it; and I’ll hold this one. We can do it in fifteen minutes. Go ahead from the top line across.” And my Buzz held the paper in his hand as he seated himself in readiness upon the corner of my desk beside me.
“Oh, my Buzz, I have such a mortification that I cannot add one to another of these long figures. When I place one number to another I must use my fingers, and in this case you see that it is impossible.” Tears I did not allow in my eyes, but they were in my voice, and I looked into the eyes of my Buzz with a great terror. “What is it that I shall do? I am in disgrace.”
“You complete edition of a kid, you, don’t you know I can do it for you? That is, if you know what all these kilo things stand for in English. Do you?” As he spoke, that kind Buzz put his hand on my shoulder with a nice rough shake.
“I do know from my governess, Madam Fournet, and I will write it all down for you, my Buzz, for whom I feel so much gratitude for help,” I answered with quickness.
“Stow the gratitude and write ’em all out. It will take us about an hour but it is good to keep calicoes waiting occasionally,” he said, and did thereupon seat himself beside the table and draw to himself the two sheets of paper, while I quickly wrote out the table of French weights and measurements translated into English.
I did very much enjoy that hour in which my Buzz labored with a pencil and a great industry while I called to him the list of long figures and then verified as he showed me the units upon the page in the French language. He made jokes at me between workings while he attended his cigarette and we, together, had much laughter.
“There are just three places where these figures disagree and I have marked them carefully, L’Aiglon,” he said as at last he laid down both pieces of the paper. “These French specifications and figures that floored you, represent the ideal mule in bulk and these United States figures promise the same multitude in scrub. I thought as much. You just run in there to Bill with them and then forget you ever saw them, and we’ll be on our way to the girls in ten minutes. Bobby, I mean it when I say that men in your and my positions of trust just forget facts and figures the minute we get out of sight of our chiefs. And we forget the chiefs too, believe me. Now run along and come out to the car on the same trot.”
“Is it of honor not to tell to the Gouverneur Faulkner that you assisted me in this task, my Buzz?” I asked of him with anxiety.
“No need to tell him—it’s all in the same office and will come to me for filing. Don’t say anything that will bring on talk that keeps us from Sue and the gang. Just run!” With which advice my kind Buzz disappeared through the door into the office of my Uncle, the General Robert, as I softly opened the door of the room of the Gouverneur Faulkner and entered into his presence. And in that presence I found also my Uncle, the General Robert, in a very grave consultation with the Gouverneur Faulkner.
“The papers completed, Your Excellency,” I said in a very low and meek tone of my voice as I laid the papers beside him on the table and prepared to take the running departure that my Buzz had commanded of me.