About two miles from the town the cheery lights of a wayside auberge attracted their attention.
“Let us get some coffee here,” said Armstrong.
This solitary tavern rejoiced in the name of “Café d’Angleterre,” but if its owner expected thereby to attract the custom of Mr John Bull, he was singularly mistaken. The chief customers of the place were labourers and navvies, who by their noisy jargon were evidently innocent of all pretensions to a foreign tongue.
Seeing two strangers, presumably able to pay ready money for what they consumed, the old landlord invited his visitors into the bar parlour, where at his own table he set before them that delightful concoction of chicory and sifted earth which certain provincial Frenchmen call café. And being a gregarious and inquisitive old man, and withal proud of his tolerable stock of English, he took the liberty of joining them.
“Inglese?” inquired he, with a pantomimic shrug.
“Quite so,” said the tutor, putting up his glass, and inspecting the fellow carefully.
“This is the ‘Café d’Angleterre,’” said the landlord, “but, hélas! it is long since the Inglese gentleman come here. They like too well the great town.”
“Ah, Boulogne has grown. Can you remember the place twenty years ago?”
“Can I? I can remember forty years.”
“I wonder,” broke in Roger, too impatient to allow his tutor to lead up gradually to the inevitable question, “if you can remember some English players coming over here about eighteen years ago and acting a play called Hamlet in English.”