He helped his wife out of the cab, and they passed through into the broad, vaulted passage which connected the street with the courtyard of the hotel. By the dim light afforded by an old-fashioned hanging lamp Nancy Dampier saw that three people had answered the bell; they were a middle-aged man (evidently mine host), his stout better half, and a youth who rubbed his eyes as if sleepy, and who stared at the newcomers with a dull, ruminating stare.
As is generally the case in a French hotel, it was Madame who took command. She poured forth a torrent of eager, excited words, and at last Dampier turned to his wife:—"They got my letter, but of course had no address to which they could answer, and—and it's rather a bore, darling—but they don't seem to have any rooms vacant."
But even as he spoke the fat, cheerful-looking Frenchwoman put her hand on the young Englishman's arm. She had seen the smart-looking box of the bride, the handsome crocodile skin bag of the bridegroom, and again she burst forth, uttering again and again the word "arranger."
Dampier turned once more, this time much relieved, to his wife: "Madame Poulain (that's her name, it seems) thinks she can manage to put us up all right to-night, if we don't mind two very small rooms—unluckily not on the same floor. But some people are going away to-morrow and then she'll have free some charming rooms overlooking the garden."
He took a ten-franc piece out of his pocket as he spoke, and handed it to the gratified cabman:—"It doesn't seem too much for a drive through fairyland"—he said aside to his wife.
And Nancy nodded contentedly. It pleased her that her Jack should be generous—the more that she had found out in the last three weeks that if generous, he was by no means a spendthrift. He had longed to buy a couple of Persian prayer carpets in that queer little warehouse where a French friend of his had taken them in Lyons, but he had resisted the temptation—nobly.
Meanwhile Madame Poulain was talking, talking, talking—emphasising all she said with quick, eager gestures.
"They are going to put you in their own daughter's room, darling. She's luckily away just now. So I think you will be all right. I, it seems, must put up with a garret!"
"Oh, must you be far away from me?" she asked a little plaintively.
"Only for to-night, only till to-morrow, sweetheart."