ne sentence, not one word, can we understand, though we are quite near
and can hear it all. When you remember the painfully slow way you have
learnt _avoir_ and _etre_ at school it is maddening to think that this
child, much younger than you, can rattle away in French without any
trouble, and it is still more annoying that when you _did_ think you
knew a little French you cannot make out one single word! French spoken
is so very different from French learnt out of a book! However, for your
comfort you must remember that that little bright-eyed boy, whose name
is probably Pierre or Jacques, would think you very clever indeed to be
able to talk in English.

[Illustration: A LITTLE FRENCH BOY.]

The houses have a strange look; it is chiefly because every single one
of them, even the poorest, has sun-shutters outside the windows, set
back against the wall; they are of wood, mostly painted green and
pierced with slits. In countries where the sun is hot and strong at
midday the rooms must be kept cool by such shutters.

When we are once clear of the town the train soon gets up great speed,
and we race through green fields with hedgerows and trees as in our own
land, and yet even here there is something different. It may be because
of the long lines of poplars, like "Noah's Ark" trees, which appear very
frequently, or it may be the country houses we see here and there, which
are more "Noah's Ark" still, being built very stiffly and painted in
bright reds and yellows and greens that look like streaks. At the level
crossings you see women standing holding a red flag furled, for women
seem to do as much of the work on the railways as men; and waiting at
the gates there is often a team of three or four horses, each decorated
with an immense sheep-skin collar, that looks as if it must be most hot
and uncomfortable. Occasionally we catch sight of what looks like a
rookery in the trees seen against the sky; however, the dark bunches are
not nests at all, but lumps of mistletoe growing freely. Rather a
fairytale sort of country where mistletoe can be got so easily!

We can stay all night in Paris if we like, and travel the next day to
Marseilles, and stay a night there too. That is doing the journey
easily. Many people go right through, running round Paris in a special
train and being carried speeding through France all night. There are
sleeping cars made up like little cabins with beds in them and every
luxury. But it is tiring to