Paul could speak a little French, and he bought the bath-tickets, paying an extra sum for soap and towels.
“Well, I hope that’s mean enough!” said Kirke, when this was explained to him. “Do they charge extra for the water, too?”
Then they followed a waiting-maid up-stairs into separate bath-rooms; and again Kirke was astonished, for when he had entered his room, the girl turned the key and locked him in. To the American boy, unused to foreign customs, this seemed a strange proceeding.
When he had made his toilet, rung a bell, and been released from solitary confinement, he ran out to seek Paul in the waiting-room.
“What do you think, Paul Bradstreet! That girl locked me into my room!”
“Well, she locked me into mine, too; that’s a way they have in this country.”
Kirke related his experience to the girls that afternoon in a very graphic way, as the quartette strolled together on the heights.
Pauline laughed, and Molly demurely remarked that she had never heard before of a country where people were shut up who hadn’t been naughty!
“Be careful, Molly, or President Faure may hear you,” said Paul, in pretended alarm. “I suppose he is in that square, cream-colored house this minute; it’s where he lives in the summer.”
“How do you know that?” asked Pauline. “Who said so?”