shell-fish which they sold there, and which was a specialty. That was a fine place: they always ate out on the terrace, where they could see everything that was going on in the little square, and Elinor, who had known the place for years, said how lovely it would be in spring.
Often they would eat at little places, which were not very expensive and which Elinor also knew about. She knew about everything: there was nothing about Paris she did not know. Elinor did the talking, rattling off her French like a native—or, anyway, like a native of Boston who speaks French well—trippingly off the tongue, getting the same intonations and gestures the French got, when she argued with them, saying:
“Mais non—mais non mais non mais non mais non mais non!” so rapidly that we could hardly follow her, and she could say: “Oui. C’est ça!—Mais parfaitement!—Entendu!… Formidable!” etc., in the same way as a Frenchman could.
Yet there was a trace of gaiety and humour in everything she said and did. She had “the light touch” about everything, and understood just how it was with the French. Her attitude toward them was very much the manner of a mature and sophisticated person with a race of clamouring children. She never grew tired of observing and pointing out their quaint and curious ways: if the jolly proprietor of a restaurant came to the table and proudly tried to speak to them his garbled English, she would shake her head sharply, with a little smile, biting her lower lip as she did so, and saying with a light and tender humour:
“Oh, nice!… He wants to speak his English!… Isn’t he a dear?… No, no,” she would say quickly if anyone attempted to answer him in French. “Please let him go ahead—poor dear! He’s so proud of it!”
And again she would shake her head, biting her lower lip, with a tender, wondering little smile, as she said so, and “Yes!” Francis would say enthusiastically and with a look of direct, serious, and almost sorrowful earnestness. “And how grand the man is about it—how simple and grand in the way he does it!… Did you notice the way he used his hand?—I mean like someone in a painting by Cimabue—it really is, you know,” he said earnestly. “The centuries of living and tradition that have gone into a single gesture—and he’s quite unconscious of it. It’s grand—I mean like someone in a painting by Cimabue—it really is, you know,” he said with the sad, serious look of utter earnestness. “It’s really quite incredible.”
