Now the boarding-house had been recommended by the lady of the school at which the sisters were being educated. It was one kept by a French lady, to which but few English people were in the habit of going. Of the charming language of our neighbors across the Channel, Alfred Whittaker did not know one word beyond a form of salutation which he called _bong jour!_ and an equally useful word which he was pleased to call _messy_. These two old people were therefore absolutely at the mercy of their young daughters; and the young daughters themselves thanked Heaven many times, during the three weeks which they passed together in Paris, that French had not been included in the curriculum of either their father's or mother's education. Oh, they meant no harm, don't think it for a moment. There was no harm in either the one or the other. They were modern, human girls, into whom a life of independence had been instilled as a religion. Independent their mother wished them to be, and independent they were to an abnormal and an aggressive degree. They were as sharp as needles, exactly as their old schoolfellow had said years before; they had acquired a knowledge of Paris which was simply extraordinary considering that they had been immured in a _pensionnat_ for demoiselles. They knew all the great emporiums quite intimately, and having extracted some money from their father on the score that it was no use their mother coming to Paris without buying clothes, and also that their own wardrobes required renewing, they whisked their mother from the _Louvre_, to the _Bon Marché_, from the _Bon Marché_ to the _Mimosa_, and even got wind of that wonderful old market down in the Temple, where the Jews hold high revel between the hours of nine o'clock in the morning and noon. What a time it was. "My girls," said Regina to an elderly English lady with whom she foregathered in one of the pretty little white _crêmeries_ in the Rue de la Paix, "speak French like natives. I was educated in all sorts of ways--I have taken degrees and done all sorts of things that most women don't do--but when you put me down in Paris, I am utterly undone. I never realized before what a terrible thing want of education is." "And yet you have taken degrees," said the lady, admiringly. "Yes, but they are not much good when you come to Paris. But my daughters," she added, with pride, "speak French like Parisians." It was a little wide of the mark. The girls did speak French with considerable fluency, and they had the advantage of not being shy, and of never allowing want of knowledge to keep them back from communicating with their fellow-beings. And as they gabbled on, as Alfred Whittaker frequently declared, nineteen to the dozen, Regina stood by and admired. CHAPTER VII "LITTLE PIGLETS OF ENGLISH" I doubt if even a universal _entente cordiale_ will ever make the French mind and the English mind think alike.