But the man was in such high spirits over the whole program he had laid out for me--winter and spring,--the thought of Paris and the Riviera,--that he was quite beside himself. More than once he said to me, beaming through his monocle, “We shall have a delightful time on the continent soon. I’m looking forward to it, and to your first impressions.” Every evening he wanted to take my hastily scribbled notes and read them, and after doing so was anxious to have me do them all just that way, that is, day by day as I experienced them. I found that quite impossible, however. Once he wanted to know if I had any special preference in wines or cordials and I knew very well why he asked. Another time he overheard me make the statement that I had always longed to eat rich, odorous Limburger cheese from Germany. “Done!” he exclaimed. “We shall have it for Christmas.” “But, Papa,” piped up Berenice maliciously, “we don’t all have to have it at the same time, do we?” “No, my dear,” replied Barfleur solemnly, with that amazingly patronizing and parental air which always convulsed me, a sort of gay deviltry always lurking behind it. “Only Mr. Dreiser need have it. He is German and likes it.” I assumed as German a look as I might,--profound, Limburgery. “And I believe you like Mr. Jones’s sausage,” he observed on another occasion, referring to an American commodity, which he had heard me say in New York that I liked. “We shall have some of those.” “Are American sausage like English sausage?” inquired young Charles Gerald interestedly. “Now Heaven only knows,” I replied. “I have never eaten English sausages. Ask your father.” Barfleur merely smiled. “I think not,” he replied. “Christmas is certainly looking up,” I said to him badgeringly. “If I come out of here alive,--in condition for Paris and the Riviera,--I shall be grateful.” He beamed on me reprovingly.