It was really a grand banquet and lasted a long while. With the dessert were passed little favors of colored tissue paper. Kirke’s favor proved to be a blue Liberty cap which he put on with much glee. Paul and Weezy had Marie Stewart bonnets; Pauline and Molly red military hats.
After-dinner speeches followed, the French people complimenting the Americans, and the Americans complimenting the French. And then, having returned thanks to the captain for his courtesy, the guests arose from the feast.
In leaving the room Molly turned to speak with Miss Evans and observed that she had exchanged her black serge travelling dress for one of mourning silk, but still wore at her belt the large, conspicuous reticule.
“A leather bag at a grand dinner! What strange taste!” she thought. “And yet Miss Evans is certainly a lady.”
In the morning they landed at the port of Havre and passed through the Custom House. There, to Weezy’s great indignation, their trunks were opened and searched. When a dark, sour-looking officer handled roughly her cherished Araminta, the little girl could no longer contain herself, but in her anxiety exclaimed aloud,—
“Please, sir, lift my doll easy! Sometimes her eye falls out!”
He never answered, never even looked up, but went on holding the unfortunate Araminta upside down in his left hand, while with his right hand he fumbled about among the contents of the box.
Weezy considered his conduct extremely rude, and was very angry with him, till her mother suggested that as he was a Frenchman he might not have understood what she said.
After the luggage had been examined and chalked with a capital letter D, our party drove to the Frascati, a large hotel, for breakfast.
After breakfast the boys walked off to the immense stone bath-house across the court. A white-capped old woman sat at a desk in the broad entrance hall, writing accounts in a ledger. The boys had French money—francs and centimes—which they had received from the purser on the ship in exchange for United States money.