The White Shadow | Page 9

were satisfied, and we would spare her life if she prepared breakfast in seventeen seconds.
She accepted the gift of existence with a dazed courtsey, and vanished.
It was refreshing to get hold of a sponge and coldwater after fourteen hours in a cramped compartment. Hunger drove us to hurry--a thing we rarely did in the morning--and the way we splashed cold water about would have been fatal to any but a tiled floor.
"Dear," I said, "you have not yet seen me in my Tyrolese knickerbockers and beautiful shooting jacket. You have never beheld my legs clothed in Tyrolese stockings, at twenty francs a pair."
"The legs?" she inquired from the depths of a bath robe.
I ignored the question, and parted my hair with care. Then I sat down on the window and whistled.
Of course I was ready first. Sweetheart's hair had got into a tangle and needed to be all combed out.
"Oh, I know you are impatient, because you're whistling the Chant du Depart," she said from the door of her toilet room.
"As usual," I said, "I am ready first."
"If you say that again "she threatened.
I said it, and dodged a sponge. Presently I was requested to open the trunk and select a gown for her. Dear little Sweetheart! She loved to pretend that she had so many it needed long consultation to decide which. ?? 2005 by http://www.HorrorMasters.com
"The dark blue?" I inquired.
"Don't you think it is too warm?"
"The pale blue, then--or the pink and white?"
"Why not the white, with the cuffs a l'Anglaise, and the canoe hat?"
I hauled it out.
Then, of course, she changed her mind.
"I think the gray is better for the morning; then I can wear the big chip hat."
I fished up the gray. It was light, almost silvery, and had white spots on it.
"Jack, dear," she said, coming out with her hair tucked up in a knot, drawing the bath robe up to her chin with both hands, "I think that the white cloth would be better, and that I can wear the beret."
By this time the trunk was in a pretty mess, which amused her; but at last I ferreted out the white cloth dress, and, refusing to listen to further discussion, sat down on the window seat. Sweetheart enjoyed it.
"Stop telling me to hurry," she said; "I can't, if you keep saying it all the time."
After a while she called me to fasten her corsage, which hooked with about ten hundred hooks along the side and collar. I hated to do it, and my finger ends stung for hours after, but, as Sweetheart very rightly says, "When we are rich enough to have a maid you needn't," I submitted with an air which delighted her. Her tormenting "Thank you, Jack," was the last straw, so I calmly picked her up and carried her out, and almost to the dining room, where I set her down just in time to avoid the proprietor and three domestics issuing from the office.
Sweetheart was half inclined to laugh, half indignant, and wholly scandalized. But she did nof dare say anything, for we were at the dining-room door.
There were some people there, but except for a slight inclination we did not notice each other. We had a small table to ourselves by the rose-bowered window.
We were very hungry. Breakfast began with fresh sardines just caught, and ended with little Breton cakes and a demi-tasse. I finished first; I always do, because the wretched habit of bolting my food, contracted while studying under Bouguereau at Julian's, clings to me yet. Oh, I shall have a merry time paying for it when I am forty! I began, as usual, to tease Sweetheart.
"If you continue to eat like this, dear, you will never be able to wear your new frocks.
This one seems a trifle too tight now."
Sweetheart, who prided herself as much on her figure as on her lovely face, repelled the insult with disdain and nibbled her Breton biscuit defiantly. When at last she condescended to rise, we strolled out under the trees in front of the hotel, and sat down on the low stone wall surrounding the garden. The noon sun hung in the zenith, flooding the town with a dazzling downpour. Sunbeams glanced and danced on the water; sunbeams filtered through the foliage; sunbeams stole under Sweetheart's big straw hat, searching the depths of the gray eyes. Sunbeams played merry mischief with my ears and neck, which were beginning to sting in the first sunburn of the year. Through the square the white-coiffed women passed and repassed; small urchins with silver-buckled hatbands roamed about the bridge and market-place until collected and trooped off to school by a black-robed Jesuit freì€re; and in the shade of the frees a dozen sprawling men in Breton costume smoked their microscopical pipes and watched the