Brittany

COLD-IN-THE-HEAD

Nancy’s rapid, fluent French gave directions to the small, sabot shod boy who dragged behind him a blue painted hand cart. Then she turned to bestow an additional hug on the waiting Cynthia.

“Oh, but it is grand to see you. And how brown you will get here! Come along. FranÇois’ll bring your luggage in his perambulator.”

Cynthia drew a deep whiff of the ocean scented air. “Ouff! ’S nice to get on solid ground again. I feel inches deep in train dirt and trolley dust. How sweet the air smells, Nancy.”

“You’ll see the broad Atlantic in a moment or two, just over that way a few blocks. We have to walk about a half mile to the bathing beach, but it’s a beauty when you get there.” Cynthia gave a little skip of delight. “How’s your especially nice parent?” she asked.

“She’s always lovely. At the moment she’s in a seventh heaven, having donned a disreputable paint-smeared smock, stuck an old straw hat on her head, and is painting ocean foam and wet rocks, laying the color on the canvas with a trowel! She’s awfully glad to be free of the illustration business for a time, if you ask me. But you’ll see her soon. She gets hungry and comes home to meals.” Nancy babbled on and Cynthia had a chance to see how brown and strong she looked, how much good the summer in this tiny provincial town was doing her.

“We turn here, to the right. This, ladieeze and gen’lemen, is the main and principal street of Le Conquet, the most wester-r-r-n town in all France. Sweet, isn’t it, Cindy?”

It was, Cynthia admitted, adorable. Old and gray and cobblepaved, with a tiny, one-pedestrian sidewalk along one wall, and with little two- and three-story houses of old, pearly-gray stone whose tiny windows opened intimately close to the street, as did the heavy wooden doors. Green lichened roofs sloped steeply, and there were red geraniums blooming in open windows between blowing red and green checked curtains, to give color to the mellow softness of the ancient stone.

“Our American hero, Mr. Jones, used to put in here, they say,” remarked Nancy casually.

“What Mr. Jones?” asked Cynthia, then at Nancy’s deepening dimple, always an index to her mood, suspected a trap. “Who was Mr. Jones?”

“Why surely you remember John Jones, of the U. S. Navy? No? ... Not Mr. John Paul Jones?”

“Beast!” laughed Cynthia, then “Tell me some more.”

“Well, as you know, this is the Department of Finisterre, Lands End, and is the farthest west of all western provinces. Some centuries ago, dunno how many, but not long, it belonged to England and the people here are closer to the southwest-of-England type than you could imagine.”

They turned a corner, past a wide lipped stone well where a woman dipped water in a huge, creamy-toned pitcher. Cynthia murmured, “Wait till I can get to my sketch book!” and Nancy nodded understandingly.

“Then the French got it back,” she continued, “and perhaps the English again after that. Anyway the English burnt it a couple of times, though there were still some English families living here, but spared the houses in which they lived. That’s why there are still some very old places, in spite of the conquerors. Here’s the quay. You must get out your canvas sneakers, these cobbles are death on good leather shoes. Wooden sabots are best, though I’ve never tried ’em.”

The tiny hotel smelled pleasantly of soap and good Breton cooking. One went steeply up two flights of stairs to a narrow hall and turned into a small, whitewashed room with a dresser, a wash stand and a white covered bed. The single window overlooked the long stretch of quay and the tidal river, very low now and turning to marvelous lavender in the sunset light.

“My room is next door, and mother’s beyond that. Here are your things. I brought you the longest way so you could see the town—Goodness, you aren’t catching a cold are you?” Cynthia sneezed again. “I hope not. But a small child in the train from Paris had frightful snuffles, right in my own compartment, and it was sort of drafty on the trolley from Brest.”

Promising to hurry, she closed the door and went to the window to hang out, gazing. Wooden shoes clattered merrily on the cobbles of the quay, and along the distant dunes, purpling with dusk, smoke rose from the smouldering potash fires where, Nancy had said, the thrifty Bretons burned seaweed for fertilizer.

She was pleasantly weary and very hungry. All last night she had been traveling, more than half the width of France from Paris to Brest. Uncle Leslie had sailed from Brest after the Armistice, she remembered, and its steep streets and ancient houses, built on half a dozen different levels, had fascinated her during the hours she had to wait for her trolley to Le Conquet.

It had been surprisingly hard to leave Paris. That city had changed for her, almost overnight. She could have stayed on there, almost happily, doing paintings and more paintings, digging herself in. Almost happily, but not quite. After all, she could have done that in New York. And what was the use of keeping on with a thing, once you had learned you could really do it, once you had met it and conquered it? While she was over here it was up to her to travel, learn, experiment, grow.

And here, right outside the window was her first view of a real French village. How different from Paris, how quaint and sweet and clean—and oh, how paintable it was going to be. No wonder Nancy’s famous artist mother planned to spend her summer here. Perhaps Mrs. Brewster would be able to tell her how to find a model for the next cover, the Christmas number of Little One’s Magazine. Cynthia wanted to paint a little dark eyed Breton girl or boy, in wooden shoes and quaint cap for that December number.

Goodness, there was the dinner gong! Cynthia pulled in her head just in time to face Nancy at the door. “Mother just came up stairs. Want to come say hello?”

Cynthia sneezed and fumbled in her suitcase for a clean handkerchief. “Just a moment, Nan. I’ve been so busy just looking that I haven’t had time to get washed or combed. Now where did I put those hankies? Pour out the water, will you honey? So I can wash. Oh ... darling Mrs. Brewster!”

Nancy’s mother, as pretty as ever, tanned from sea bathing, seemed hardly older than her daughter. “We’re so glad to have you here, my child. I want to hear all about your covers, and see what you’ve been doing. Nancy tells me you’ve already completed one painting, in Paris—Here’s the dining room, and this is our table.”

There were several painters and two writers among the jolly little crowd at the Hotel Des Poissons. Cynthia got a tremendous thrill out of having these older people, all professional craftsmen of proved ability, regard her with respect and as an artist already “arrived.” Yet she was, after all, also a professional, traveling, actually seeing the world on what she earned with her brush and pencil. When she stopped to think about that, Cynthia always felt like a fairy-tale-princess who has rubbed the magic ring. But generally she was too busy to think about it.

The next morning Nancy took her to explore the little town, not a long tour, for there were not six streets in the whole place. The ancient sturdy houses, facing the sea for half a dozen centuries seemed to grow from the very rock on which they were built. Below the hotel one crossed a bridge, at high water, or walked on a raised path across the sands, at low tide, to a long sandy beach bordered with dunes and tall waving grasses, very white and flat and clean.

Cynthia surveyed the clear stretch of deserted sand, and Nancy’s brief little bathing suit with a longing eye. “I won’t go swimming for a day or two, I guess,” she decided. “This cold doesn’t seem to get any better and I’d rather not risk it.” She wondered if she were being old-maid fussy about herself.

Breakfast was a delightfully informal meal, at almost any hour of the morning, and in the inn parlor, not the dining room. Here the ceiling quivered with reflections from the sunspangled river.

On the second morning Nancy brought to breakfast a large, mysterious bag, and when she had received her huge bowl of cafÉ au lait, weak coffee made with milk, she opened the paper bag and dumped a handful of what appeared to be rolled oats, raw, into her bowl.

“What on earth is that?” asked Cynthia.

“That’s my breakfast food, want to try some?”

Cynthia shook her head, “Goodness no. But where can you get breakfast food, American style, in a paper bag, in a French village?”

“Feed store,” mumbled Nancy around her large spoonful. “It’s just chicken feed. Bran. I get so hungry by noon, with these continental breakfasts.”

“How about an egg?” was Cynthia’s suggestion. “Soft boiled.”

“Try and get it.” Nancy’s tone was amused.

Cynthia struggled with the hard-to pronounce oeuf. Shortly it came, all alone on a small dish. It was hot, so it must have been in hot water. But when she broke it ... “Ugh! It’s completely raw!”

“They simply won’t boil it any longer, unless you want a twenty minute egg, like a rock,” explained Nancy. “It’s one of the unsolved mysteries of the French cuisine. You’ll come to chicken-feed yet!” Meanwhile the time was passing. Cynthia had arrived on a Thursday, Sunday had rolled round, her Christmas cover must go off to Paris this week, and she seemed no nearer it than the week before. In fact, so far, she hadn’t seen any children that looked paintable.

“They are pretty enough,” she mourned, at breakfast on Sunday. “But it’s merely a matter of color with them. I haven’t seen a single child that I thought would make a good poster cover.”

Mrs. Brewster nodded. “I know. But some of the old people are marvelous. There are no better types for models of old people in all of France.”

“But not for the Christmas cover of a children’s magazine. Unless ... there is a thought, I give them a Breton Santa Claus.”

“No whiskers on ’em here.” Nancy was most discouraging. “What have you to suggest, Mother?”

“Hark, there’s the church bell. I suggest that you two hurry into your best bonnets and shawls and go to church. All the village will be there and you will have a good chance to look them over. Then if you find what you want I’ll ask Madame, our patronne, to introduce us. Hurry now!”

It was a splendid idea, Cynthia admitted, as she followed Nancy into the little stone church. Surely every good Breton inhabitant of Le Conquet was present, the women in wide skirts trimmed with bands of black velvet, with full sleeves, and tight black bodices setting off the lace-trimmed white aprons, the frosty white caps of Breton lace and the wide lace collars. Here at least, all the lovely quaintness of medieval France had not gone down before the stupid uniform of store-bought gingham dresses.

The men were no less picturesque, with their low crowned wide brimmed hats, the shining silver buttons on their short, black velvet coats. And each child was a miniature replica of its parents, with the exception of the caps which mark the married women.

The small bleak church was warmed to light by the rustle of many garments, by the soft glow of candles and Cynthia was enchanted by the little ship-models that swung from the hand hewn rafters, all of them as perfect as skill and loving care could make them. “They are thank offerings for the safe return of the ships they represent,” Nancy whispered to her. “Oh look, Cindy; isn’t she a darling?” Her elbow nudged for Cynthia’s attention.

The minute Cynthia saw her, her artist’s eye registered her as the one model for that Christmas cover. Such pansy-brown eyes, such soft curls around the little pink-cheeked face, such a dimpled round chin above the starched white collar and the tight little bodice, like a small child playing at grown-up.

Cynthia nodded her approval of Nancy’s choice. “How nice,” she thought, “to be with artists again. Oh, I wish they could be with me all over France,” remembering her loneliness in Paris.

After the service they edged their way toward the door, Cynthia keeping the child in sight all the way. The little girl’s mother, who walked behind her, was a larger edition of the same type and must have been lovely when she was young, but was now bent and weary eyed, like so many of the hard working Breton peasants.

Nancy’s eyes had been roving the church. Now she gave Cynthia a reassuring nod. “Wait for me outside,” she commanded and wriggled away through the crowd. Cynthia, who was taller than most of the villagers, saw her stop at last before a woman in black and wearing a hat. Their own patronne from the hotel, very much in her Sunday best. Nancy waved to Cynthia, then the two disappeared, blotted out by the congregation.

Five minutes later she joined Cynthia in the little square above the fountain. “It’s all right,” she reported triumphantly. “We identified your model and her mother, and Madame says she will ask her about posing.”

That was fine. Cynthia already saw her cover, painted, delivered, printed, and exhibited on every Christmas news stand in New York. She drew a breath of relief.

They strolled back toward the hotel and the pleasant smell of Sunday dinner, the crowd slowly trickling away behind them. The little bakery was already doing a brisk business, for many of these small shops opened as soon as the church was out. Cynthia’s eyes caught a new poster on the bakery wall, a single sheet of vivid lemon yellow with blue and red type, such a bright patch of color in the pearly gray street that she hauled Nancy along to look at it.

“Well ...” after a minute of Nancy’s silent contemplation. “What does it say, stupid? Can’t you read out loud, the way you were taught?”

Nancy chuckled. “Sorry, I forgot. Well, ‘Hypnotiste’ means ‘Hypnotist.’”

“I gathered as much as that. What comes after it?”

“‘World renowned Professor Reynaldo.’ That sounds Spanish but he says he’s from Paris—‘Parisien’—will be here on Tuesday evening to give a demonstration of his stupendous and altogether unexplainable power of the human eye,” Nancy translated loosely. “It also says his demonstration will be held in the meat market. ... I suppose that’s the biggest room they have, except the church, and that admission will be one and two francs. Standing room fifty centimes. Poor thing, he can’t make much of a living out of that.”

“Let’s go,” suggested Cynthia.

“Eh? ... Well ... yes.” Then as the idea struck her. “I think it would be fun. Maybe mother would like to go. Let’s ask her now.”

Mrs. Brewster was amused at the idea and quite willing they should go, but refused to be a third of the party. “Not if it’s to be held in the meat market. I never could stand the odor of so many sides of beef and mutton. But you children go along. I’m sure you will find it an amusing cross section of the peasant’s amusement. I believe they have never had a hypnotist here before.”

But Cynthia very nearly didn’t get to the entertainment after all. For on Sunday afternoon she went swimming with Nancy. It was an hour or two after dinner, the warmest part of the day when the girls took their bathing suits and crossed the little path across the tidal river. The way straggled along the top of a high, wind-torn meadow where coarse grasses tangled about the feet and where, on the rocks below, the sea piled, churning among the crevices. But the further side of this little peninsula was the bathing beach, quite wild and deserted, and one could choose any of a hundred grass-grown sand dunes for a dressing room. Nancy had raced on ahead, and Cynthia sneezed twice, and wondered if she ought to go for this swim, after all. She wrestled with her conscience for a bit ... and conscience lost.

It was a beautiful swim, but about midnight Cynthia awoke with such a sore throat she could scarcely whisper. “Oh, darn!” she murmured feverishly. “What a bother! I do hope I’m not going to be sick!”

She lay for a bit thinking about that, then rapped gently beside her bed. She heard Nancy’s springs creak, heard her mutter something sleepily, and in a moment the light of Nancy’s candle appeared beneath the crack of the door. The crack widened and a sleepy voice asked, “Did you rap, honey? Oh, you poor thing! Cynthia, you are a wreck!”

Mrs. Brewster was called immediately and then Madame. Together they applied a hot, oily cloth to Cynthia’s throbbing throat, a funny aluminum hot-water bottle to her feet, and gave her a dose of something else, equally unpleasant and equally hot. Then she was given something to breathe on a handkerchief ... Cynthia muttered that it nearly blew off the top of her head, but it did miraculously clear her nose for its original purpose of breathing.

Next day she felt heaps and heaps better and protested that she could easily get up. But she was kept in bed till noon and then allowed out only for a short stroll in the sunshine, equipped with a handkerchief soaked in the breathing stuff. “But no more bathing till you are quite over this,” was the stern order of Nancy’s mother.

“Yes’m,” murmured Cynthia meekly, ashamed to have given them all such a fright.

There was, however, a final straw. At dinner that night Madame reported that she had seen the mother of the little girl, Leonie her name was, and that the woman refused to let the child pose for her portrait.

“But how silly,” stammered Cynthia. “What is the matter? I’ll pay for her time of course.”

“It’s not that,” Mrs. Brewster explained from Madame’s conversation. “But they are rather afraid of artists. The few who come here paint only the sea and the dunes. They aren’t accustomed to the idea of artists’ models, not even for portraits. This woman seems unusually simple and I suppose the word ‘posing’ made her think of wicked Paris! I’m sorry, for I think I might have persuaded her. Madame probably didn’t know how to go about it tactfully. ... If the woman could have met you. ... But aren’t there others you can get? I’m sure there must be.”

So that Christmas cover had gone to smash, too! It would be hard to pick out another child, after having seen Leonie. Perhaps she’d have another opportunity to see the villagers at the meeting on Tuesday evening.

Mrs. Brewster again gave her reluctant, though amused, consent. “If you’ll take a fresh handkerchief with some of that Breathex on it. ...”

“Three of ’em,” promised Cynthia and Nancy together.

“... And come straight home if you find you’re in a draft, or if you start to sneeze.”

“We will,” came the chorus.

Mrs. Brewster laughed. “All right. And I may sound fussy, but a tiny village in a foreign country is no place for one to get ill. Now run along and get ready for your show.” They followed the crowd and the clomp of wooden shoes to the meat market at the center of the town. Here, in the big hall, benches—rough boards on trestles—had been arranged and the Professor himself stood at the improvised ticket window.

“Shall we be extravagant and take a two-franc ticket? Then we can sit in the front row,” suggested Nancy.

“Let’s,” urged Cynthia. “What fun to have eight cents buy so much luxury.”

The first two rows were very de luxe; benches with backs, but so hard and narrow that Cynthia was glad they had brought their coats for cushions. The children, giggling and whispering, somewhat awestruck by the promised entertainment, crowded into the seats behind them, and in the front rows sat the old ladies, some even with their knitting, very straight and stiff and impressive. There was a scuffle of sabots on the stone floor and outside a tied sheep baa-a-a-ed plaintively.

Everyone peered and craned and turned heads to see the two American mademoiselles, and discussed them in friendly fashion, but quite openly. Cynthia’s bright beret and red coat, her gray eyes and dark curls, her shoes, her silk stockings, the ring on her finger, were argued and debated ... and relayed by Nancy in a choked murmur.

“You are rich, since you wear a gold ring with a greenglass stone in it. Someone suggests that you are married, also because of the ring, but it seems Madame at the hotel has reported that you are still a ‘Mees,’ judging by your letters. Oh, here is our professor!”

M’sieu Reynaldo, who had been at once ticket taker and dispenser, usher, and frightener-away of small boys who would press their snubby noses against the windows, at last barred the doors and strode proudly up the center, and only, aisle. The stage was a rough platform on saw-horses, beneath the light of a half dozen dim, swinging lanterns, and was but a few feet from the de luxe seats occupied by Cynthia and Nancy.

“Look, Nancy; there’s my lost model, Leonie. See, there at the end. Isn’t she a darling!”

“Sh-h,” Nancy nudged her. “He’s going to begin.” The professor’s performance began with a short talk on hypnotism, its great antiquity, its meaning, and mostly of how wonderful he was at that ancient art. How, with the supreme power of his eye and a few passes of his hands—somewhat soiled hands they were—he could control his subjects and command them, thereafter to do his bidding.

“I don’t believe it,” murmured Cynthia.

“Wait and see,” muttered Nancy.

“I must have absolute quiet here, during my demonstrations,” frowned the great Reynaldo. He was a small, slender-boned man in a soiled velvet jacket, and the jetty hair, the low brows, the wide cheekbones of the typical lower class Parisien—an amusing contrast to the bigger, blonder, slow-moving Breton audience.

He asked first for two volunteers from the audience. After considerable shy shuffling of feet and chattering insistence on the part of their feminine escorts, two boys were shoved forward, down the aisle. Laughing, red with embarrassment, the clumsy young fishermen mounted the stage, then half numb with stage fright awaited the next move. A chorus of murmured advice came from the interested and neighborly audience.

“Silence!” ordered the professor, with a flash of his Paris-black eyes.

Then before the eyes of each volunteer he made passes with his hand, gave a low murmured command, and first one, then the other became glassy eyed and appeared to go into a waking sleep, there on the stage. The hall was intensely still, hardly a foot stirred or a skirt rustled.

Cynthia choked in her handkerchief. “Oh, dear,” she thought. “I believe I’m going to sneeze, and how shall we ever get out of here!” But the scent on her handkerchief, though it nearly strangled her, did put a halt to the sneeze.

“You are now asleep,” the Professor told his subjects. “You will do exactly as I say. Lie down and roll over.”

The two young men lay down on the platform and rolled over. There was a murmur of awe from the onlookers.

“Now this is a stairway and you are climbing up it,” continued the orders. “Now open this door,” where there was no door. “It is cold and windy out and the rain beats on your faces as you open it.” The two staggered back, arms over eyes as though they had indeed opened a real door on a blast of wind and rain.

Cynthia was getting a little bored with this. It seemed so onesided, so unsporting. The audience tittered, but the boys were such simple country lads it seemed unfair they should be made a laughing stock like this. She didn’t like that oily little man with his velvet coat and his soiled hands. “I wish he’d stop,” she thought.

The exhibition continued with various orders. The subjects were given water to taste, an empty glass to smell, but the Professor directed that they smell or taste whatever he dictated, and their faces amusingly registered disgust or delight or surprise. Yes, they were funny, but Cynthia felt uncomfortable and looked back over her shoulder toward the bolted door. She wished she hadn’t come.

Only once did the little professor nearly lose his subjects. During a tense and silent moment the sheep in the yard uttered a prolonged “Ba-a-ah!” The audience giggled hysterically and one of the young men began to come to himself again, looked around in a bewildered fashion and walked to the edge of the platform.

The Professor waved his hands, snapped his fingers. “Go, it is finished,” he commanded.

The two subjects blinked awake. If they had been caught abroad in their nightshirts they could not have looked more red and sheepish.

After that the renowned Reynaldo attempted to hypnotize a small dog, a little fox terrier that belonged to someone in the audience. The effort was hardly a success, for the fox terrier didn’t seem to realize he was a subject for the professor’s art. But the audience, with the remembrance of the former demonstration, was properly impressed and after a bit the terrier was allowed to go, barking his joy at the release, unharmed to his master.

Again the Paris Professor called for volunteers, asking this time for two little girls as he had already demonstrated his power over grown men. The children on the benches behind Cynthia and Nancy giggled and nudged, “You go ... no, you go ... Let M’rie go ... Let Leonie ...” till five had been suggested and the professor, making his choice, called two to the stage.

“Oh, there goes my little model,” murmured Cynthia, really distressed. “Can’t we stop her, Nancy?”

Nancy shook her head, her eyes on the stage. “I don’t know how we could. After all, the professor is French and we are just outsiders. Better let them handle it themselves.”

Cynthia subsided meekly but kept an eye on the little Leonie. What a lovely pose ... and that one ... and the next. Why the child was a born model, a picture in herself!

She was also excellent material for the hypnotist, for she immediately obeyed his orders, going to sleep bolt upright in her chair before the professor’s waving, commanding hands. The other little girl, older and of stouter stuff, though not so easy a victim was also finally put to sleep. To Cynthia’s relief Reynaldo used more discretion in this case and satisfied his audience by having the children do a little dance, by having them appear to smell a rose when he gave them an onion, seem to taste something sour when he gave them a bonbon.

Then he asked if either of the girls were musical. Someone in the audience volunteered that Marie could sing but that Leonie could not sing a note. He then commanded Leonie to come forward and perform for them. “Sing correctly,” he ordered, and named a little nursery tune known to all French children.

The child really had a very pretty voice and performed with considerable credit. Also her friends seemed to think it marvelous that she could sing at all. But Cynthia, stifling a sneeze in her handkerchief, tapped a restless foot on the stone floor.

Good, it was going to end! Monsieur Reynaldo had commanded with a sharp clap of his hand beside the ear of each child, that his subjects come awake. M’rie blinked her china blue eyes, smiled timorously and clattered down the steps to join her friends.

But Leonie was a different matter. As Cynthia, taking a deep breath of her “Breathex” soaked handkerchief, watched with some interest, then growing apprehension, it seemed that the Professor also was becoming concerned.

To cover his own confusion, he ordered her to get up, to walk across the stage, to do various things, all of which she performed with her former obedience. But when he again made passes before her eyes, then, in a low tone to cover possible failure, again ordered her to waken, she remained as soundly, as blank-eyed asleep as before. The audience was apparently undisturbed, and seemed to take all this as part of the performance.

“I’m worried,” Cynthia confided to Nancy through the muffling folds of her handkerchief. “Oh, but this stuff is strong.” Her eyes were streaming with tears, but so far she had managed to keep back that sneeze.

“Worried?” Nancy turned big eyes on Cynthia. “Do you mean to say ...”

“I don’t think he can get that child out of that trance. I wonder ...”

Cynthia turned to look around the audience. They too were beginning, unconsciously, to reflect the professor’s concern. Quietly, three times now, he had given his command, Cynthia’s ears were abnormally keen, in spite of the cold.

She glanced back again at the stage, then decided what she would do. Evading Nancy she slipped out of her seat, past the two old ladies who sat on the aisle. It was just a step to the stage, a step or two across it. Leonie’s blank stare did not turn to follow her, but Cynthia knew that she had the attention of every other soul in the house.

She smiled briefly at the bewildered professor and crossed to the child. From her pocket she drew a clean handkerchief soaked with the over-powering scent of “Breathex.”

“I wonder,” Cynthia spoke in English in the hope that the professor, being from Paris, knew a little of that tongue, “if the petite enfant would like to smell this.” And before the hypnotist could protest, had clapped the handkerchief to Leonie’s little snub nose.

It was like a double dose of smelling salts. The American makers would have been proud of their preparation, though perhaps no such strange application of it had ever been suggested to them.

Leonie choked, coughed, strangled a moment. But the blank left her eyes and she struggled to escape the handkerchief. Bewildered, for a moment she gazed at Cynthia, then smiled shyly in a perfectly human, understanding fashion.

Tactfully Cynthia withdrew. “Merci, Professor,” she murmured and backed down the steps.

She heard little of what followed. The Professor’s florid explanation of this occurrence, of the American’s interference with his demonstration, but his willingness to let that pass ... and so on and so on. The audience murmured polite amazement, stared at Cynthia, clapped at the end of Reynaldo’s speech, and began to rise from their benches. The door swung open into the sweet, starlit night.

“Well ...!” stated Nancy. “You certainly distinguished yourself. Gosh, but that was a close call for Leonie. Wonder what would have happened ...”

Cynthia shook her head. “But I knew something must happen if she got a whiff of this. It would have pulled a mummy back to life. Ah, here’s Leonie.”

The child’s mother had appeared beside her, holding her hand. She at least was not unaware that the American Mees had done something, though she wasn’t quite sure what, for her petite.

“Thank you,” she murmured in shy, halting English; then, that proving to be all she knew, she broke into fluid French which almost stumped Nancy to translate.

“She asks,” interpreted Miss Brewster, “if there is anything she can do for the pretty American ... make a bow, Cindy ... She says she is very grateful to you and that it was very naughty for her Leonie to go up on the stage like that, before all the village. I’ve told her that we will come tomorrow to pay our respects to Leonie’s household. We’ll bring Mother along, too. That all sounds sufficiently formal.”

They streamed out into the fan of light across the cobbled road. The white caps and dark dresses of the audience melted behind them into darkness. The night was sweet and warm and there was a sound of the sea on the rocks, far off.

“Good night,” called Cynthia. “Good night!” then slipped her hand into Nancy’s arm.

“There,” said Nancy, “is your Christmas cover, my dear, and in such a funny way.”

“Aitchoo!” sneezed Cynthia in eloquent reply.