"That's all right—you can talk English! Can't he talk English, Jennie?"
Jennie nodded.
"Suppose you talk it," I said.
"Rather! I'm going to tell him, Jennie.... English? Why, that's the whole thing! Yesterday morning when I woke up"—he glanced towards the bed by the window—"I hardly dared to believe it! They were talking down in the street or somewhere, and all at once I wondered—what I mean is that I couldn't quite catch it. It all seemed so quick and difficult, just a lot of jabbering. Not a bit like we learned it: 'Je veux une plume, de l'encre et du papier'—you know. So I lay there thinking, looking up at the ceiling. Then I had an idea. I got quietly out of bed and went to the door there." He nodded in the direction of the door now. "I opened the door and called down to Madame. I've done that every morning for café-au-lait, you see. Now here's the point."
He emphasised the point with a forefinger.
"There's a Breton word for café-au-lait. Don't ask me what it is; I don't ever want to hear it again. Anyway, I'd used that word for three mornings, and that morning I couldn't remember it for the life of me. I thought perhaps if I just went to the door and called without stopping to think it might come of itself, but not it! I had to ask for café-au-lait, and of course up it came all right....
"Well, I didn't say a word to Jennie. We got up and went out sketching. But forgetting that word, and all the French I heard sounding so awfully funny and foreign, was on my mind all the time. And the next thing was that I forgot the word for willow—I happened to be sketching some willows. Couldn't think of the French for willow. And all day it was the same. Some people came and looked over my shoulder while I was painting, but all I could make out was the word 'Salon,' and, of course, that's just as much English as French.
"Then I started talking bits of French to Jennie, and she got a bit cross—didn't you, sweetheart? She thought I was pulling her leg about her own French. And so it went on all day, and me getting more and more excited about it. Then at night I told Jennie all about it. I told her she'd have to go out and do the shopping, because I simply daren't. I'd had little jokes with the shop people, you see, and I thought to myself, 'By Jove, if they joke back now I shan't have a word to say!' You see what I'm getting at, don't you?"
Dismay filled my heart. So this was the magnificent news that had thrown them so ecstatically into one another's arms! This was what had happened in the night this time! He, who the evening before had sung to the poilus downstairs, had had to send her to do their shopping! Little enough to rejoice over, I thought. But he went on.
"Then to-night, just before you came in, it happened again. Some French word or other, quite a simple one—I just couldn't remember the English for it. It was hardly a moment before you came in. I tell you it's all going away from me by leaps and bounds. Even when I know the words my tongue won't pronounce them properly. And then you came in. You see what it means, don't you?"