"I don't mind."
"Well, will you have escargots?"
"What's that?"
"Snails."
Sally shook her head with a grimace and smiled. Berthe tittered with
laughter.
"Monsieur is funning, he would not eat escargots himself." She smiled
at Sally, the smile that opens confidence and invites you within;
no grudging of it between the teeth, ill-favoured and starved, as
we do the thing in this country.
"However did you find this lovely little place?" asked Sally, when
the girl had gone with Traill's order.
"Deux consommes, deux!" shouted Berthe through a door at the end of
the room. "Deux consommes, deux!" came the distant echo from the
kitchen.
Traill leant his elbow on the table and looked at her--let his eyes
rest on every feature, last of all her eyes, and held them.
"By not looking for it," he said. "By passing it one evening at about
the time for dinner, seeing the new-old bottle-panes in the leaded
windows, looking down these stairs and getting a rough-drawn
impression that the place was cosy, a rough-drawn impression in which
the bottle-panes suggested that they had some sort of ideas in their
heads, these people--and the little pots of evergreen down the stairs
with the ugly red frilled paper round them that made you think that
they had known the country--lived in it.
Pages:
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158