CHAPTER VI.
Poppa decided that we had better go to Versailles by Cook's four-in-hand. There were other ways of going, but he thought we might as well take the most distinguished. He was careful to explain that the mere grandeur of this method of transportation had no weight with him; he was compelled to submit to the ostentation of it for another purpose which he had in view.
"I am not a person," said poppa, "nor is any member of my family, to thrust myself into aristocratic circles in foreign lands; but when an opportunity like this occurs for observing them without prejudice, so to speak, I believe in taking it."
We went to the starting place early, so as to get good seats, for, as momma said, the whole of the Parisian élite with the President thrown in wouldn't induce her to ride with her back to the horses. In that position she would be incapable of observation.
The coaches were not there when we arrived, and presently the Senator discovered why. He told us with a slightly depressed air that they had gone round to the hotels. "Daughter," he said to me, "J.P. Wicks does hate to make a fool of himself, and this morning he's done it twice over. The best seats will go to the people who had the sense to stay at their hotels, and the fact that the coaches go round shows that they run for tourist traffic only. There won't be a Paris aristocrat among them," continued poppa gloomily, "nary an aristocrat."
When they came up we saw that there wasn't. The coaches were full of tourist traffic. It was mounted on the box seats very high up, where it looked conspicuously happy, and sounded a little hysterical; and it was packed, tight and warm and anticipant into every available seat. From its point of vantage, secured by waiting at the hotel for it, the tourist traffic looked down upon the Wick family on the pavement, in irritating compassion. As momma said, if we hadn't taken our tickets it was enough to have sent us to the Bon Marché.
A man in a black frock coat and white shirt cuffs came bareheaded from the office and pointed us out to the interpreter, who wore brass buttons. The interpreter appeared to mention it to the guide, who wiped his perspiring brows under a soft brown felt hat. A fiacre crawled round the corner and paused to look on, and the Senator said, "Now which of you three gentlemen is responsible for my ride to Versailles?"
The interpreter looked at him with a hostile expression, the guide made a gesture of despair at the volume of tourist traffic, and the man with the shirt cuffs said, "You 'ave took your plazes on ze previous day?"
"I took them from you ten minutes ago," poppa replied. "What a memory you've got!"