“Yessah!” (with a prayer it might not be Portuguese). “What language, sir?”
“This is—er—French.”
Yes, he could speak French, and hastened to look. Dormer was a clerk in a bank. Like so many of that species, he had had a grandmother with views as to the improvement of his position in the world, and she had insisted that he should learn the French language. Why she desired this was never discovered, unless it was that she considered it a genteel accomplishment, for she dated from the days when society was composed of two sorts of people, gentle and simple. She belonged to the former category and was in no danger of allowing any of her descendants to lapse. As she paid for the extra tuition involved, her arguments were irrefutable, and the boy intended for no more romantic a career than is afforded by a branch office in a market town, had, in 1900, a fair knowledge of the tongue of Voltaire and Hugo.
He hardly reflected upon the matter again until, in the midst of a European War, he found that that War was being conducted in a country where French was the chief language, and that familiar-sounding words and phrases assailed his ear on every side. This was of considerable service to him, enabled him to add to his own and his brother officers’ comfort; but he never boasted of it, having a profound uncertainty, after years of clerkdom, about anything so foreign and out of office hours. The legend of his peculiar ability persisted, however; and when after more than a year of incredible fatigues and nastiness, his neat methods and perfect amenity to orders were rewarded by the unofficial job of helping in the A. and Q. office of a division, he found his legend there before him. It was therefore with a sigh, and a mental ejaculation equivalent to “Spare me these useless laurels,” that he got up and went over to his Chief’s table, to be confronted by the sentence:
“Esquinté une vierge chez moi!”
“What’s Esquinté? It’s not in Cassells’ Dictionary!”
“I should say—knocked asquint, sir! Spoiled, ruined; they often say it, if the troops go into the crops.”
“Well, how does it read, then? Knock asquint; no, that won’t do; ruined, you say. Ruined a Virgin in my house. This sounds like a nice business, with the French in their present mood!”
Dormer simply could not believe it and asked:
“May I see the claim?”