"It is enough!" interrupted the other, vehemently. "You have found it. I engage you now, at once. Come, the carriage is here. Let us enter."
"But," objected the lad, "I have a friend whom I cannot leave."
"Let him come! Let all your friends come! Bring your whole family if you will, but only stay with me yourself!" cried the Frenchman, impetuously, "I am distracted by my trouble with this terrible language, and but for you I shall go crazy. You are my salvation. So enter the carriage, and your friend. Après vous, monsieur. Do you also speak the language of beautiful France? No? It is a great pity."
"Does his royal highness take us for dukes?" questioned the bewildered Bonny, who, not understanding one word of the foregoing conversation, had, of course, no idea why he now found himself rolling along the streets of Tacoma in one of its most luxurious public carriages.
"Not exactly," laughed Alaric; "but he takes us for interpreters—that is, he wants to engage us as such."
"Oh! Is that it? Well, I'm agreeable. I suppose you told him that I was pretty well up on Chinook? But what language does he talk himself?"
"French, of course," replied Alaric, "seeing that he is a Frenchman."
"Are you a Frenchman too?"
"Certainly not."
"Well, I didn't know but what you were, seeing that you talk the same language he does, and just as well, for all that I can make out. Really, Rick Dale, it is growing interesting to find out the things you know and can do."