better; and once
it was too funny. We were in a shop in Lucerne, and father wanted to
know the price of something, so he held it up before a little dapper man
with blue eyes and yellow hair, and said, 'Com-bi-on'--that's the way he
pronounced it--'com-bi-on;' but the man didn't com-bi-on worth a cent,
and only stared at him as if he thought him a lunatic. Then father tried
again, and yelled as loud as he could, '_Pree--pree!_ how much-ee,
much-ee?' Then there was a glimmer of a smile on the man's face, and
when father, wholly out of patience, roared out, 'Damnation, are you a
fool?' he replied, 'No, but I'm a Yankee like yourself, and the price of
the carving is twenty-five francs;' and, sure enough, he was a chap from
Maine. After that father always asked them first if they
_parlez-vous-ed_ English. Mother got on better, because she knew more of
the language, and always gave a twist to the words which made them sound
Frenchy; but she was afraid to talk much, for fear she'd make a mistake
and Miss Grundy would laugh at her. She is awfully afraid of Miss
Grundy, especially if the _genus homo_ happens to be English. But I did
not care. I wanted to learn, and I studied in the railway car, and at
the table, and in bed, and had a teacher when we staid long enough in a
place, and then I plunged in, mistake or no mistake, and talked to
everybody. I used to sit on the box with the driver when we drove, so as
to talk to him, and you have no idea what a lot you pick up that way, or
how glad they are to help you; and now, though I do not suppose I always
use good grammar or get the right accent, I can _parlez_ with the best
of them, and can speak German, too, a little. I think I have improved
some; don't you, auntie."

Of course she did, and she told him so, and smiled fondly upon the
bright, handsome boy, knowing that in what he said of himself there was
neither conceit nor vanity, but a frankness and openness which she liked
to see in him.

"And now for grandpa," he suddenly exclaimed, "he will think I am never
coming."

And before she could stop him he had entered the low, dark room, where,
on the bed, pushed close to the side-wall near the woodshed, and just
where it had stood for thirty years, the old man lay, or rather sat, for
he was bolstered upright, with chair and pillows behind him, his long
white hair parted in the middle and combed behind his ears, and his arms
folded across his bosom.

At Grey's abrupt entrance