After this, she was constantly appealed to for translating French into English. On one of these occasions, Mrs. Rowe said, with one of her affable smiles, “We are grateful to you, Miss Evans, for acting as our interpreter. Mr. Rowe and I find ourselves sadly rusty in French.”
“So are Molly and I, Miss Evans,” added Pauline. “You never would dream that we’ve just been studying it; now would you?”
“And we had good marks at school, too,” said Molly. “I don’t see what the trouble is.”
“I do,” said Pauline. “We are not one bit to blame. The people don’t understand their own language, that’s all. Ask ’em a question, and they just shake their heads and rattle off the sounds of the vowels,—‘A, ah, aw, ă, ē, e,’ and so on.”
Pauline was a capital mimic, and rendered this burlesque of foreign speech with a drollery that provoked loud applause and aroused Donald to a high pitch of enthusiasm.
“A, ah, ow; bow, wow wow,” he screamed, waving his little hands like Pauline.
Jane Leonard quietly slipped her arm about his waist to prevent his falling from the carriage, and whispered him to be quiet, for her head ached. She considered little Number Six a very noisy child. Though too young to appreciate the quaint, beautiful pictures of the constantly changing landscape, he enjoyed their novelty, and was constantly trying to express his delight.
“And this is Normandy,” said Mrs. Rowe, drawing a long breath of satisfaction; “picturesque Normandy.”
Ancient houses, on which were growing grass and flowers,—among the flowers the fleur-de-lis, or lily of France. By the roadside, gorgeous red poppies, hobnobbing with the blue corn-flower or bachelor’s button. Acres and acres of sugar beets, and of flax, and of absinthe. In one valley, some peasants—men and women—were pulling the absinthe and laying it in rows to dry.
“They should burn it instead,” Captain Bradstreet remarked rather severely. “The drink they make from absinthe intoxicates and does them much harm.”