I went. I was ushered into a tiny and stuffy parlour, and there for twenty interminable, brain-racking minutes I confronted Madame G. Then an old lady in a bath-robe sidled into the room, and we all confronted one another for ten minutes more. Madame G. may be a devil of a fellow with a croquet-mallet in her hand, but small talk is not her strong point. Neither is it mine, for the matter of that, when I am slowly suffocating in a foreign land. However, we finally adjourned to the garden. Where, oh where was the croquet ground? Where, oh where were my faithless companions? Where, oh where was tea? A quarter to five rang out from the tower of Nôtre Dame, and here was I marooned on a French grass plot adorned with trees, real trees, apple trees, plum trees, an enterprising pergola, several flower-beds and, Heaven help me! croquet hoops—hoops that had just happened, all anyhow, no two looking in the same direction. In direct line of fire rose a tall birch tree. I gazed at it in despair. A niblick, or a lofter, or a crane might get a ball over it, but a croquet mallet?... Circumvention was impossible. There were three bunkers.
"It is like your English croquet grounds?" Madame asked. "We play all the Sundays——"
"Ah, yes, through the Looking-glass," I murmured, and she responded—
"Plaît-il?"
I hastily congratulated her on the condition of her fruit trees.
Five o'clock. What I thought of the faithless was by now so sulphuric, blue flames must have been leaping out of me. Five-fifteen. A Sail! The Arbiter, full of apologies, which did nothing to soften the steely reproval in my eye. Then Madame disappeared. At five-thirty she came back again accompanied by delinquent number two. She held a hurried consultation with the bath-robe, then melted again into the void.
"Can I go?" I signalled to the Arbiter. She shook a vigorous head. The rattle of tea-cups was coming from afar. At a quarter to six Madame announced tea. It was served in the dining-room. We all sat round a square table very solemnly—it was evidently the moment of Madame's life; there was no milk, we were expected to use rum—or was it gin?—instead. Anyway I know it was white, and one of us tried it, and I know ... well, politeness conquered, but she has been a confirmed teetotaller ever since.
At six-five Madame was weeping as she recounted a tale she had read in the paper a day or so before, and six-twenty-five we came away.
"And we never played croquet after all. But you will come again when Monsieur mon mari is here, for Les Anglaises they love 'le sport.'"
But we never went back. Perhaps the tree-tops frightened us, or perhaps we were becoming too much engrossed in sport of another kind. You see, M. le Curé of N. came to visit us the next day, and soon after that Madame Lassanne inscribed her name on our books. Which shall I tell you about first? Madame Lassanne, who was a friend of Madame Drouet, and actually succeeded in making her talk for quite a long time on the stairs one day? I think so.