Why, Frank, you’re going to love him like a brother… the whole, great heart of France is beating underneath that waiter’s jacket… and, ah! such grace, such flashing rapier-work of Gallic wit, such quick intelligence and humour…. Ecoutez, garçon!” he called; the boy turned, startled, and then, seeing the young men, his thick lips slowly wreathed themselves in a smile of amiable stupidity. He came towards them smiling eagerly, a clumsy boy of eighteen years with the thick features, the dry, thick lips, the blunted, meaty hands and encrusted nails of the peasant. It was a face of slow, wondering intelligence, thick-witted, unperceptive, flushed with strong, dark colour, full of patient earnestness, and animal good-nature.
“Bonsoir, monsieur,” he said, as he came up. “Vous désirez quelque chose?” And he grinned at them slowly, with a puzzled, trustful stare.
“But yes, my boy!… I have been telling my friend about you, and he wants to meet you. He is, like me, an American… but a true friend of France. And so I told him how you loved America!”
“But yes, but yes!” the boy cried earnestly, clutching eagerly at the suggestion. “La France and l’Amérique are of the true friends, n’est-ce pas, monsieur?”
“You have reason! It’s as you say!”
“Vashingtawn!” the boy cried suddenly, with a burst of happy inspiration.
“But yes! But yes!… Lafayette!” the other yelled enthusiastically.
“Pair-shing!” the boy cried rapturously. “La France et l’Amérique!” he passionately proclaimed, and he turned slowly to Starwick, joined his thick, blunt fingers together, and thrusting them under Starwick’s nose, nodded his thick head vigorously and cried: “C’est comme ça!… La France et l’Amérique!”—he shook his thick joined fingers vigorously under Starwick’s nose again, and said: “Mais oui! Mais oui!… C’est toujours comme ça!”
“Oh, my God!” groaned Starwick, turning away, “how dull! How utterly, unspeakably dreary!”
“Monsieur?” the boy spoke inquiringly, and turned blunt, puzzled features at Starwick’s dejected back.
Starwick’s only answer was another groan: flinging a limp arm over the back of his chair, he slumped in an attitude of exhausted weariness. The boy turned a patient, troubled face to the other youth, who said, in an explanatory way:
