After that there was another long, fragrant silence which lasted until Harrison roused himself with a sigh, exclaiming that although he would like nothing better than to sit right there till he took root, they had yet to "do" the two Trianons and to see the state carriages. During this sightseeing tour he repeated his performance of the morning in the chateau, pouring out a flood of familiar, quaintly expressed historical lore of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which made his astonished listener declare he must have lived at that time.
"Nope!" he answered her. "Got it all out of Illinois libraries. Books are great things if you're only willing to treat them right. And history—by gracious! history is a study fit for the gods! All about folks, and they are all that are worth while in the world!"
They were standing before the Grand Trianon as he said this, waiting for the tram car, and as it came into sight he cried out artlessly, his dark, aquiline face glowing with fervor, "I—I just love folks!"
She looked at him curiously. "In all my life I never knew any one before to say or think that." Some of his enthusiasm was reflected upon her own fine, thoughtful face as a sort of wistfulness when she added, "It must make you very happy. I wish I could feel so."
"You don't look at them right," he protested.
She shook her head. "No, we haven't known the same kind. I had never even heard of the sort of people you seem to have known."
The tram car came noisily up to them, and no more was said.
V
A notice posted the following day to the effect that for some time the reading-room would be closed one day in the week for repairs, gave Harrison an excuse for insisting on weekly repetitions of what he called their historical picnics.
Miss Midland let herself be urged into these with a half-fearful pleasure which struck the young American as pathetic. "Anybody can see she's had mighty few good times in her life," he told himself. They "did" Fontainebleau,[129-1] ] Pierrefonds,[129-2] ] Vincennes,[129-3] ] and Chantilly[129-4]—this last expedition coming in the first week of May, ten days before Miss Midland was to leave Paris. They were again favored by wonderfully fine spring weather, so warm that the girl appeared in a light-colored cotton gown and a straw hat which, as her friend told her, with the familiarity born of a month of almost uninterrupted common life, made her look "for all the world like a picture."