“That was after the war?” asked Roger.
“Yes. Before that I had more. But, alas! they left me for the field, and came no more.”
“Were all your waiters Frenchmen?” asked Roger.
Madame stared curiously at the questioner.
“Why do you ask? I have had many kinds. Some English, like Monsieur.”
“A year or two after the war,” said Roger, “there was an Englishman, a relation of mine, who was a waiter in an hotel in one of the suburbs south of Paris. I want to hear of him. I have hunted for weeks. I could hear nothing of him. I came here before I gave it up as a hopeless search, and, as you know, I’ve been laid up ever since. You have been kind to me, Madame; something makes me think I was not kept here for nothing. Can you help me to find my friend?”
The landlady began to have inward misgivings that she had not behaved to this pleasant-spoken young guest of hers as nicely as she might have done, and she secretly resolved to revise the bill in his favour before presenting it.
“Why, Monsieur, I had plenty English in my time. The year after the war I had—let me think—two or three. Your friend—was he the little lame one who waited beautiful at table, but that he cough, cough, till I must send him away?”
“No; that’s not the one.”
“Then it was the fat one?—John Bull, we call him, who eat more than he served, never used a fork when he had his fingers. Ah, he was a dirty one, was your friend!”