MADELINE’S cousin Edmond, who was motoring about Brittany with a friend, took the girls to the quaint old shrine of Mount St. Michel and promised them other expeditions equally delightful if they would only stay on for a few days longer at Saint Malo or Dinard. But Mrs. Hildreth felt anxious to get to Paris, which was really the goal of all her trips abroad, and Babbie had her own reason—the countess’s ball,—for not wanting their arrival delayed beyond the appointed day. Babe couldn’t have explained even to herself why she wanted to be in Paris, but she did. And Betty and Madeline, not wishing to be in the opposition and being sure of a good time either way, were perfectly satisfied with Mrs. Hildreth’s decision to go on just as they had intended.
“And we’ll go to Madeline’s pension, shan’t we, mummie?” asked Babbie, a trifle anxious lest Mrs. Hildreth should insist on the hotel where she always stayed.
“And it’s just as ordinary and commonplace as if it were in New York,” Babbie had told the girls sadly, with a newly awakened perception that her traveling had hitherto been of a very commonplace variety. But Mrs. Hildreth only asked what were the especial merits of Madeline’s pension.
“She won’t tell,” explained Babbie, looking beseechingly at Madeline, who only returned a serene smile. “She just says it’s queer and quaint and the kind of thing we all like, and that we can see what it’s like, if we go there.”
“But if we don’t go there, you simply must describe it, Madeline,” said Betty so solemnly that Mrs. Hildreth laughed and declared they would patronize Madeline’s pension.
Finally, after a long day’s ride in the Paris express and a drive across the city in the queer taximeter cabs—where you sit and watch the distance and the francs for the fare, pile up in the indicator and forget, in the absorbing interest of this occupation, to look around you at the sights of the strange city—the driver of the first cab stopped before a blank wall in a narrow, rather dirty street. Upon being admonished by Babbie that he was wrong he pointed inexorably at the number on the wall, and even Babe, most ardent admirer of Madeline’s theories, gave a gasp of dismay. The two girls were with Mrs. Hildreth, while Betty and Madeline were behind, and Marie was in a third carriage with most of the baggage.
“Careful, Babe,” Mrs. Hildreth whispered. “We don’t want to hurt Madeline’s feelings—nor Mademoiselle’s.” For Madeline had written ahead for rooms, and when the porter opened the door in the high and dingy wall, a pretty Frenchwoman was running across the graveled courtyard inside, eager to greet her guests.
“We’ll stay here to-night,” Mrs. Hildreth decided hastily, “and then in the morning I can easily make an excuse to change.”
Mademoiselle was certainly charming, if her front door—or front gate—was not. Smiling and chatting, she led the way across the court to the old stone mansion and helped her two little maids show the party up-stairs and settle each one’s baggage in the room she chose. Madeline, Babe and Betty had single rooms, all looking out on still another court. This one was shut in on three sides by ivy-covered stone walls, and shaded by a great magnolia tree; and enticing little green tables, like those in the cafés at Saint Malo, stood about here and there. The rooms themselves were long and narrow—just like cells, Babe declared with a shiver—and as soon as she was dressed she went down into the courtyard to wait for dinner. When the girls found her she was sitting on the gravel scratching the back of a big turtle, which, she joyously informed her friends, was attraction number one of Madeline’s pension.
“Its name is Virginia—no, that’s not right. What’s the French of Virginia? Virginie, then. And it knows its name, only it won’t answer unless it knows you. At least, that’s what I understood Mademoiselle to say. I’m scratching its back so beautifully that it ought to follow me around like a dog hereafter.”
Attraction number two was a very good dinner, and attraction number three was going to bed by candle-light, which made the tiny rooms seem more like cells than ever. But Betty suggested that they were more like nuns’ cells than prisoners’, and Babe said she liked the idea of being a nun—it was very much like being a man-hater when you came to think of it.
Attraction number four was the best of all; it was having breakfast in the garden. Mademoiselle had explained that they could have “petite dejeuner,” which means coffee or chocolate and crusty rolls, whenever they liked, and they had all agreed to be ready at half-past eight—which is really very early indeed in Europe—so as to have a long day for sightseeing. Betty got down first and was going into the dining-room to wait for the others, when a servant asked her to sit in the garden instead, and before she knew what was happening, her breakfast appeared on a tray. Just then Babe pulled back her curtains and stuck her head out of the window to see how the garden looked so early; and giving a shriek of delight, she rushed down to eat, too. Mrs. Hildreth hadn’t been much impressed by Virginie or the candles, but she was as delighted as the girls with breakfast under the magnolia tree, and she readily agreed to wait a little before deserting Madeline’s pension.
The first thing that every one wanted to do after breakfast was to call at the American Express Office for mail. It had been accumulating ever since they left London, so there was plenty to go around—letters and papers from home for all the party, and for Babbie a note from Billy Benson.
“He got here last night, too,” she explained, “and he’s still with Mr. Trevelyan, so evidently it’s all right about the name. He wants our address and says he’ll be around to see us late this afternoon, and possibly Mr. Trevelyan’s sister may come, too. He was telephoning her while Billy wrote. Oh, dear, I don’t believe mother’s going to want me to go to the dance, after all. But I’ll answer this so they’ll know where to find us.”
Initiating Betty and Babe into the delights of Paris was an exciting task, and by the middle of the afternoon they were all quite ready to go home, put on their thinnest dresses, and drink iced tea under the magnolia tree while they waited for the advent of Billy and Mr. Trevelyan. It was six o’clock, however, before the men arrived, hot, tired, and in Billy’s case, somewhat out of temper.
“It’s an awfully out-of-the-way street,” he complained. “Why, Trevelyan knows Paris like a book, but he couldn’t find it. We’ve walked and walked and asked and asked. We were late starting in the first place, though, because Trevelyan’s sister didn’t come.”
“It’s very odd,” Mr. Trevelyan put in. “She was to have come to our hotel at three, after doing some shopping with her friend. It was perfectly understood, but we waited till four and she did not come. I am sure only some unavoidable accident has prevented her joining us.”
“Surely your mother will let you go all the same to-morrow?” Billy asked Babbie.
Babbie looked doubtful. “I don’t know. Not that she would blame your sister, Mr. Trevelyan; but she’s awfully particular about chaperons and she isn’t strong enough to chaperon me to dances and things herself. She’s lying down now, but I’ll write you the first thing in the morning. Will that be soon enough to decide?”
“Sure,” said Billy gaily, “only we thought —Trevelyan has errands to do in the morning, but he suggested that we meet in the early part of the afternoon for a little sight-seeing. You could let us know then, you see.”
“If you haven’t been to the Louvre yet, we might have a look at that together,” suggested Mr. Trevelyan gravely. “I understand some of the finest galleries are to be closed next week for repairs.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you warned us in time,” said Madeline. “I’m always missing things at the Louvre because they’re closed for repairs. Where shall we meet and when?”
Mr. Trevelyan suggested two o’clock, at the main entrance by the umbrella stand, and then he rose to go. “I am worried about my sister. If she has sent no word I must wire,” he said.
Billy rose too. “I should never find my way back alone,” he said. “I’m dumb as an oyster over here. It’s great being with some one who knows the ropes.”
The girls protested against their going so soon, when they had expended so much time and trouble in coming, but Mr. Trevelyan insisted that he must get back at once, and Billy laughingly declared that the girls would have to see him safely home if he stayed and then he would have to see them safely back, and so ad infinitum.
When Babbie consulted her mother about the dance, Mrs. Hildreth listened to the story of the boys’ call, and after a little consideration decided that she couldn’t allow Babbie to go.
“Billy is a dear boy,” she said, “and his friend seems a thoroughly nice fellow, but I couldn’t think of letting you go to a dance with them out in some suburb of Paris, unless I knew you were in charge of a sensible, careful chaperon. Mr. Trevelyan’s sister may or may not answer the description. We have no idea how old she is, or what sort of person she is, or whether she even understands from her brother that you would be in her charge. Evidently you wouldn’t be while you were going and coming. Oh, it’s quite impossible.”
And Babbie admitted sadly that it was. She brightened at once, however. “If I’m as sleepy to-morrow night as I am to-night, I shouldn’t enjoy it. After all, you can go to plenty of dances at home, and you can’t go to these fascinating galleries and museums and churches. I should waste to-morrow and perhaps the day after if I went to the dance. Now I can go ahead and get as tired as I like seeing things.”
So Babbie and Madeline conducted the novices to Notre Dame, took them up in the tower to get a near view of the gargoyles, and then hunted up the shop on the Rue Bonaparte where you can buy small plaster gargoyles, exactly like those on the cathedral for two francs and fifty centimes each. It took so long to decide which Roberta would prefer, and which was best suited to K.’s taste and to Rachel’s, that the girls had to snatch a hasty luncheon at an English tea-room near the Louvre in order to be at the appointed rendezvous by two o’clock. But they did get there exactly at the appointed time, in spite of a little dispute between Babbie and Madeline about which was the “main entrance” to the Louvre. However, Babbie was speedily convinced that the main entrance was the one that had been built for the main entrance —the one with the splendid façade and not the one at the opposite side that happened to be more conveniently situated and was consequently most used by visitors. However, when they had waited fifteen minutes and the men had not appeared, the subject began to be agitated again.
“Well, what does it matter?” demanded Babbie, who hated to be kept waiting and was consequently rather out of temper. “They can reason the thing out just as well as we can. If they’ve gone to the other entrance and don’t find us there, they can come here. It’s their place to find us, not ours to hunt for them.”
“I think it’s silly to stick here, just the same,” said Babe. “Why don’t Madeline and I walk through to the other entrance and see if they’re there?”
“Because they ought to do the walking,” persisted Babbie. “They asked us to come and meet them, and anyhow it’s always the man’s place to do the hunting. I’m not going to have you chase up Billy Benson to tell him whether or not he’s going to take me to a dance to-night.”
Whereupon Madeline murmured that it was Babbie’s party, not hers, and Babe and Betty declared they would wait until exactly quarter to three and then they were going to see the Mona Lisa.
And at quarter to three they went, Babbie giving a reluctant consent to their making a detour past the other possible rendezvous. But Billy and Mr. Trevelyan were not there, and when Madeline inquired of the very stolid guard he only shrugged his shoulders and said there had been any number of young men passing in since two o’clock. Some had waited, some not.
“Seems to me Mr. Trevelyan isn’t such a good conductor as he has the reputation for being,” said Betty. “Yesterday he didn’t meet his sister, and nearly didn’t find us, and to-day his arrangements haven’t worked out very well.”
“Well, fortunately it doesn’t matter,” said Babbie, sitting down with a rapturous little sigh before the Mona Lisa. “The pictures are here, and after we’ve seen a few we can go and have some of those little boat-shaped strawberry tarts that we saw in the patisserie window. If they’d taken us somewhere to eat we should probably have had to have stupid ices.”
“And the moral, as our friend Mary would say,” laughed Madeline, “is that when you’re hunting alone you can do as you please, which is an advantage that our friend Mary has forever forfeited. Who votes to have the strawberry tarts soon?”
“Maxim for travelers,” said Babe, dejectedly, “‘when you’ve had enough, stop,’ and enough is what you can see in just a little more than half a day.”
So the girls had crossed the Seine on the top of a lumbering tram, and walked from the Luxembourg Gardens, where a concert was going on, to the queer little street where Madeline’s pension was hidden; and they had cooled off, rested, and dressed for dinner before a maid brought Babbie a card—Billy Benson’s.
“Ask him into the garden and say I’ll be there in a moment,” Babbie ordered, and went down after a perfectly needless delay, by way of preliminary discipline, prepared to receive Billy’s excuses coldly and to give him a very unhappy quarter of an hour in return for the annoyance he had caused her earlier in the afternoon.
But Billy made no excuses. Instead he announced blandly, “Well, I’m two hundred dollars poorer than I was last night and a good deal wiser, and I feel like a young idiot; but it certainly makes a good story, if that’s any consolation.”
Babbie stared. “What do you mean? Why aren’t you on your way to your dance?”
Billy grinned. “Dance is off—that is, Trevelyan is dancing somewhere, I guess, but all I get is a chance to pay the piper. You see, it was this way—well, I’ll have to begin with this morning.”
“Wait,” commanded Babbie, crossing to Babe’s window and giving the B’s familiar trill. “Come down, all three of you,” she called, when Babe’s head appeared between the curtains. “Mr. Benson has had a real adventure, and we’re on the edge of it ourselves.”
“You’re the causes of the final catastrophe,” accused Billy smilingly, as Babbie came back to him. “If you’d made the proper connections with us this afternoon, Trevelyan couldn’t have pulled off his grand dénouement. Where were you, anyhow?”
“Right where we belonged,” said Babbie firmly. “You begin with this morning, and we’ll fill in our part when the time comes.”