id. "And the
Mayberry folks were so nice and homey and kind I've come to think of 'em
as, not just neighbors, but friends. But this--THIS is foreign enough,
goodness knows! Let go of my arm!" to the smiling, gesticulating porter
who was proffering his services. "DON'T wave your hands like that; you
make me dizzy. Keep 'em still, man! I could understand you just as well
if they was tied. Hosy, you'll have to be skipper from now on. Now I
KNOW Cape Cod is three thousand miles off."

We got through the customs without trouble, found our places in the
train, and the train, after backing and fussing and fidgeting and
tooting in a manner thoroughly French, rolled out of the station.

We ate our dinner, and a very good dinner it was, in the dining-car.
Hephzy, having asked me to translate the heading "Compagnie
Internationale des Wagon Lits" on the bill of fare, declared she
couldn't see why a dining-car should be called a "wagon bed." "There's
enough to eat to put you to sleep," she declared, "but you couldn't
stay asleep any more than you could in the nail factory up to Tremont. I
never heard such a rattlin' and slambangin' in my life."

We whizzed through the French country, catching glimpses of little
towns, with red-roofed cottages clustered about the inevitable church
and chateau, until night came and looking out of the window was no
longer profitable. At nine, or thereabouts, we alighted from the train
at Paris.

In the cab, on the way to the hotel where we were to meet the Heptons,
Hephzy talked incessantly.

"Paris!" she said, over and over again. "Paris! where they had the Three
Musketeers and Notre Dame and Henry of Navarre and Saint Bartholomew and
Napoleon and the guillotine and Innocents Abroad and--and everything.
Paris! And I'm in it!"

At the door of the hotel Mr. Hepton met us.

Before we retired that night I told Hephzy what I had deferred telling
until then, namely, that I did not intend leaving for Switzerland with
her and with the Heptons the following day. I did not tell her my real
reason for staying; I had invented a reason and told her that instead.

"I want to be alone here in Paris for a few days," I said. "I think I
may find some material here which will help me with my novel. You and
the Heptons must go, just as you have planned, and I will join you at
Lucerne or Interlaken."

Hephzy stared at me.

"I sha'n't stir one step without you," she declared. "If I'd known you
had such an idea