CHAPTER V

A RECRUIT FOR THE EIGHT-THREE

Have you a shiny little set of garden tools in your home? Have we? Well,
I should seed catalogue. Honest to goodness! Here! I can show you a
local time-table and my commuter's ticket. How about that, eh, for me?

And I don't know now just what it was worked the sudden shift for
us--the Battous, or our visit to the Robert Ellinses', or meetin' up
with MacGregor Shinn, the consistent grouch.

It begun with window-boxes. Professor Leon Battou, our official wall
decorator and actin' cook, springs 'em on me timid one day after lunch.
It had been some snack, too--onion soup sprinkled with croutons and
sprayed with grated cheese; calf's brains _au buerre noir_; a mixed
salad; and a couple of gooseberry tarts with the demi-tasse. Say, I'm
gettin' so I can eat in French, even if I can't talk it.

And while all that may listen expensive, I have Vee's word for it that
since Madame Battou has been doin' the marketin' the high cost of
livin' has been jarred off the roost. I don't know how accurate
Professor Leon is at countin' up the calories in every meal, but I'm
here to announce that he always produces something tasty, with no
post-prandial regrets concealed in the bottom of the casserole.

"Professor," says I, "I've been a stranger to this burry brains style of
nourishment a long time, but you can ring an encore on that whenever you
like."

He smiles grateful, but shakes his head.

"Ah, Monsieur," says he,--oh, yes, just like that,--"but if I had the
fresh chives, the--the _fin herbes_--ah, then you should see!"

"Well, can't Madame get what you need at the stores?" says I.

"But at such a price!" says Leon. "And of so discouraging a quality.
While, if we had but a few handfuls of good soil in some small boxes by
the windows---- Come, I will show you. Here, and here, where the sun
comes in the morning. I could secure them myself if you would not think
them unlovely to have in view."

"How about it, Vee?" I asks. "Are we too proud to grow our soup greens
on the premises?"

She says we ain't, so I tells Leon to breeze ahead with his hangin'
garden. Course, I ain't lookin' for anything more'n a box on the ledge.
But he's an ingenious old boy, Leon. With a hammer and saw and a few
boxes from the grocery, he builds a rack that fits into one of the front
windows; and the first thing I know, he has the space chuckful of
shallow trays, and seeds planted in every one. A few