"Romantic?"
"Hm!—tant soit peu."
"I am all attention: begin."
"You promise not to tell?"
"Not for the world: torture could not induce me to divulge a single word."
"Well, the way it came about was this: Annie and I had been sent from England to a small French town on the coast, for the benefit of the warm sea-water baths. It was a quaint little port; all the houses reminded you of ships in their fitting up; the beds were set into the wall like berths; closets were stowed away in all sorts of impossible places; the floors were uncarpeted and white as a main deck; and articles from distant countries hung about the walls or stood in the corners—East Indian sugar-cane, cotton from America, Chinese crockery and piles of sea-shells. The great sea by which we lodged was represented everywhere. Our food was fish, shrimps and water-fowl—our acquaintance, fishermen, shrimpers and sailors. The leading event of the day was the coming in and going out of the tide, and ducks and geese were the chief domestic animals. On one side was a prospect of wind-tossed waves and the sails of ships, on the other wind-beaten fields and the sails of mills: the few cabins that had rashly ventured beyond the protection of the village shortly lost courage, and, with their thatched roofs not a yard from the earth, seemed crouching low to avoid the continuous blasts. The church alone on the high sea-wall raised itself fearlessly against the tyrant, and though his baffled voice still howled without, within the pious prayed securely before a faith-inspiring altarpiece of Christ stilling the tempest.
"In a few weeks, after we had exhausted every amusement that the dull town afforded, become intimate with all the old gossips, tired of listening to the yarns of the pilot-tars off duty, driven the donkeys over the country until they instinctively avoided us whenever we appeared, sailed in the bay and suffered periodic attacks of sea-sickness therefrom, finished the circulating library, and half learned some barbarous sentences of Norman patois, we sat down disconsolate one afternoon to devise some means of employing the remainder of our time. It was then that the bright idea struck Annie, and she exclaimed, 'Let us go to the Paris Exposition!'
"'Just the thing!' I answered with enthusiasm. 'I wonder when the next train starts?'
"'I'll go and inquire: you begin and pack the trunks. If we can get off to-day, by to-morrow morning we can begin seeing it;' and she left the room in great excitement.
"The result was, that by seven o'clock that evening we had made our hasty preparations, and were ready to set out. It was raining terribly when the only hack of the village (which, by the by, was an omnibus) called for us at the door. The dripping fluid oozed and sparkled over the blinking lamps, the ribbed sides of the antiquated machine were varnished with moisture, and the horses looked as if each hair was a water-spout to drain the sky. Noah's patriarchal mansion might have presented a similar appearance during the first days of that celebrated wet season.