Parkhurst Boys, and Other Stories of School LifeReed, Talbot Baines
General
Parkhurst Boys, and Other Stories of School Life
Reed, Talbot Baines
Schools -- Fiction
You know the pater gave us a list of places to go and see in Paris--the
Louvre and the Luxembourg, and all that. Well, he never stuck down
where they were, and we've had to worry it out for ourselves. Jim
stopped a fellow this morning and asked him, "Ou est la chemin pour
Luxembourg?" The fellow took off his hat and was awfully civil, and
said, "Par ici, messieurs," and took us a walk of about three miles, and
landed us at a railway station. He thought we wanted to go to
Luxembourg in Germany, or wherever it is--fare about three cool sovs.
The fellow hung about us most of the rest of the day, expecting a tip.
Likely idea that, after the game he'd had with us! We couldn't shake
him off till we bolted into one of the swimming baths on the river.
That smoked him out. Most of these chaps draw the line at a tub. Would
you believe it? at our inn, they never seem to have heard of soap in
their lives, and we got quite tired of saying "savon" before we found
some in a shop. Jim thinks they use it all up for soup. What we get at
the inn tastes like it.
Jim is rather a cute beggar. We went to a cafe yesterday to get some
grub, and he wanted a glass of milk. We had both clean forgotten the
French for milk, and we'd left the dixy at the inn. We tried to make
the fellow understand, but he was an ass. We pointed to a picture of a
cow hanging on the wall and smacked our lips; and he grinned and rubbed
his hands, and said, "Ah, oui. Rosbif! jolly rosbif!" Did you ever
hear of such a born idiot? At last Jim had an idea and said, "Apportez-
nous du cafe-au-lait sans le cafe." That fetched it. The fellow
twigged at once. Not bad of Jim, was it?
Jolly slow place Paris. The swimming baths are the only place worth
going to. Jim went in off the eight-foot springboard. You should have
seen the natives sit up at the neat dive he made.
I hope the pater's not going to ask too much about the Louvre, because
we scamped it. The fact is, there was a little unpleasantness with one
of the fellows, owing to Jim's cane happening to scratch one of the
pictures by a chap named Rubens. It was quite an accident, as we were
only trying to spike a wasp on the frame, and Jim missed his shot. The
fellow there made a mule of himself, and lost his temper. So we didn't
see the fun of staying, and cut.
Montreux, Lake of Geneva, _August_ 10.
Couldn't finish this before we left Paris. We meant to start for here
on Friday, but settled to come on on Thursday night after all. You
needn't go telling them at home, but between you and me it was a bit of
a bolt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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