Though for the poor comfort of physical contact.
As soon as they saw us they left their place and sidled up, tickled
beyond measure to behold American faces and hear American voices.
They belonged, it seemed, to a troupe of jubilee singers who had
been imported from the States for the delectation of French
audiences. At night, after their work at a vaudeville theater was
done, the members of their company were paired off and sent about
to the cafes to earn their keep by singing ragtime songs and dancing
buck dances. These two were desperately, pathetically homesick.
One of them blinked back the tears when he told us, with the
plaintive African quaver in his voice, how long they had been away
from their own country and how happy they would be to get back to
it again.
"We suttin'ly is glad to heah somebody talkin' de reg'lar New
'Nited States talk, same as we does," he said. "We gits mighty
tired of all dis yere French jabberin'!"
"Yas, suh," put in his partner; "dey meks a mighty fuss over cullud
folks over yere; but 'tain't noways lak home. I comes from
Bummin'ham, Alabama, myse'f. Does you gen'lemen know anybody in
Bummin'ham?"
They were the first really wholesome creatures who had crossed our
paths that night. They crowded up close to us and there they
stayed until we left, as grateful as a pair of friendly puppies
for a word or a look. Presently, though, something happened that
made us forget these small dark compatriots of ours. We had had
sandwiches all round and a bottle of wine. When the waiter brought
the check it fell haply into the hands of the one person in our
party who knew French and - what was an even more valuable
accomplishment under the present circumstances - knew the intricate
French system of computing a bill. He ran a pencil down the figures.
Then he consulted the price list on the menu and examined the label
on the neck of the wine bottle, and then he gave a long whistle.
"What's the trouble?" asked one of us.
"Oh, not much!" he said. "We had a bottle of wine priced at
eighteen francs and they have merely charged us twenty-four francs
for it - six francs overcharge on that one item alone. The total
for the sandwiches should have been six francs, and it is put down
at ten francs. And here, away down at the bottom, I find a
mysterious entry of four francs, which seems to have no bearing
on the case at all - unless it be that they just simply need the
money. I expected to be skinned somewhat, but I object to being
peeled. I'm afraid, at the risk of appearing mercenary, that we'll
have to ask our friend for a recount."
He beckoned the waiter to him and fired a volley of rapid French
in the waiter's face.
