She presently displayed it when we arrived at the Hôtel Lion
d'Or. "Jack," said she nervously, "the cinders have made your face
unpleasant. I am ashamed. They may not believe you are my husband." "As monsieur and madame," I said, "we may have dirty faces and be
honest." "Do you suppose they--they will believe it? These queer people----"

"They'd better!" I said fiercely. "I--I hadn't thought of that," she said. "You see, in our own little
place in Paris everybody knew it, but here----"

I said, "Dearest, what nonsense!" and we marched unceremoniously up
to the register, where I wrote our names. Then, with a hasty little
squeeze of her gloved hand, she turned to the maid and tripped off to
inspect our quarters. While I was pumping the fat-headed old proprietor
about the trout fishing in the vicinity, the maid returned with the
request that I mount to the room above. I followed her along the tiled
passages and found Sweetheart sitting on a trunk. "It's charming! charming!" she said. "Just look at the roses outside,
and the square, and the river! and oh, Jack, the funny little Breton
cattle, and the old man with knee-breeches! It's charming! and"--here
she caught sight of the enraptured and fascinated maid--"and you are
charming, with your red cheeks and white coiffe," she said. "Oh, how
pretty!" "Oh, madame!" murmured the servant in dire confusion. I said, "Dearest, that will do. Nobody speaks of my peculiar charms,
and I wish to be noticed." The presence of the maid prevented Sweetheart from making amends, so we
told her we were satisfied, and we would spare her life if she prepared
breakfast in seventeen seconds. She accepted the gift of existence with a dazed courtsey, and vanished. It was refreshing to get hold of a sponge and cold water after fourteen
hours in a cramped compartment. Hunger drove us to hurry--a thing we
rarely did in the morning--and the way we splashed cold water about
would have been fatal to any but a tiled floor. "Dear," I said, "you have not yet seen me in my Tyrolese knickerbockers
and beautiful shooting jacket. You have never beheld my legs clothed in
Tyrolese stockings, at twenty francs a pair." "The legs?" she inquired from the depths of a bath robe. I ignored the question, and parted my hair with care. Then I sat down
on the window and whistled. Of course I was ready first. Sweetheart's hair had got into a tangle
and needed to be all combed out. "Oh, I know you are impatient, because you're whistling the Chant du
Départ," she said from the door of her toilet room. "As usual," I said, "I am ready first." "If you say that again----" she threatened. I said it, and dodged a sponge. Presently I was requested to open the
trunk and select a gown for her. Dear little Sweetheart! she loved
to pretend that she had so many it needed long consultation to decide
which. "The dark blue?" I inquired. "Don't you think it is too warm?" "The pale blue, then--or the pink and white?" "Why not the white, with the cuffs à l'Anglaise, and the canoe hat?" I hauled it out. Then, of course, she changed her mind. "I think the gray is better for the morning; then I can wear the big
chip hat." I fished up the gray. It was light, almost silvery, and had white spots
on it. "Jack, dear," she said, coming out with her hair tucked up in a knot,
drawing the bath robe up to her chin with both hands, "I think that the
white cloth would be better, and that I can wear the béret." By this time the trunk was in a pretty mess, which amused her; but at
last I ferreted out the white cloth dress, and, refusing to listen to
further discussion, sat down on the window seat. Sweetheart enjoyed it. "Stop telling me to hurry," she said; "I can't, if you keep saying it
all the time." After a while she called me to fasten her corsage, which hooked with
about ten hundred hooks along the side and collar. I hated to do it,
and my finger ends stung for hours after, but, as Sweetheart very
rightly says, "When we are rich enough to have a maid you needn't," I
submitted with an air which delighted her. Her tormenting "Thank you,
Jack," was the last straw, so I calmly picked her up and carried her
out, and almost to the dining room, where I set her down just in time
to avoid the proprietor and three domestics issuing from the office. Sweetheart was half inclined to laugh, half indignant, and wholly
scandalized. But she did not dare say anything, for we were at the
dining-room door. There were some people there, but except for a slight inclination we
did not notice each other. We had a small table to ourselves by the
rose-bowered window. We were very hungry. Breakfast began with fresh sardines just caught,
and ended with little Breton cakes and a demi-tasse. I finished first;
I always do, because the wretched habit of bolting my food, contracted
while studying under Bouguereau at Julian's, clings to me yet. Oh,
I shall have a merry time paying for it when I am forty! I began, as
usual, to tease Sweetheart. "If you continue to eat like this, dear, you will never be able to wear
your new frocks. This one seems a trifle too tight now." Sweetheart, who prided herself as much on her figure as on her lovely
face, repelled the insult with disdain and nibbled her Breton biscuit
defiantly. When at last she condescended to rise, we strolled out
under the trees in front of the hotel, and sat down on the low stone
wall surrounding the garden. The noon sun hung in the zenith, flooding
the town with a dazzling downpour. Sunbeams glanced and danced on
the water; sunbeams filtered through the foliage; sunbeams stole
under Sweetheart's big straw hat, searching the depths of the gray
eyes. Sunbeams played merry mischief with my ears and neck, which
were beginning to sting in the first sunburn of the year. Through the
square the white-coiffed women passed and repassed; small urchins with
silver-buckled hatbands roamed about the bridge and market-place until
collected and trooped off to school by a black-robed Jesuit frère;
and in the shade of the trees a dozen sprawling men in Breton costume
smoked their microscopical pipes and watched the water. "They are an industrious race," said I with fine irony, watching a
happy inebriate pursuing a serpentine course toward the café opposite. Sweetheart, who was as patriotic a little girl as ever hummed the
Marseillaise, and adopted France as long as she lived in it, was up in
arms in an instant. "I have read," she said with conviction, "that the Bretons are a brave,
industrious race. They are French." "They speak a different language," I said--"not a word of French in it." "They are French," repeated Sweetheart, with an inflection which
decided me to shun the subject until I could unpack my guide-book. We sat a little while longer under the trees, until we both began
nodding and mutually accused each other. Then Sweetheart went up to
the room to take a nap, and I, scorning such weakness, lay down in a
steamer chair under our window and fell fast asleep in no time.