'Voulez-vous avoir la bonte,' to the waiters even!
Well, there is one thing,—I am going to reform.
To-morrow I will be as polite as anybody.
They will think that I am miraculously improved by one night on French soil; but, never mind!
I am going to do it."
She kept her resolution, and astonished Mrs. Ashe next morning, by bowing to the dame on the platform in the most winning manner, and saying,
"Bon jour, madame," as they went by.
"But, Katy, who is that person?
Why do you speak to her?"
"Don't you see that they all do?
She is the landlady, I think; at all events, everybody bows to her.
And just notice how prettily these ladies at the next table speak to the waiter.
They do not order him to do things as we do at home.
I noticed it last night, and I liked it so much that I made a resolution to get up and be as polite as the French themselves this morning."
So all the time that they went about the sumptuous old city, rich in carvings and sculptures and traditions, while they were looking at the Cathedral and the wonderful church of St. Ouen, and the Palace of Justice, and the "Place of the Maid," where poor Jeanne d'Arc was burned and her ashes scattered to the winds, Katy remembered her manners, and smiled and bowed, and used courteous prefixes in a soft pleasant voice; and as Mrs. Ashe and Amy fell in with her example more or less, I think the guides and coachmen and the old women who showed them over the buildings felt that the air of France was very civilizing indeed, and that these strangers from savage countries over the sea were in a fair way to be as well bred as if they had been born in a more favored part of the world!
Paris looked very modern after the peculiar quaint richness and air of the Middle Ages which distinguish Rouen.
Rooms had been engaged for Mrs. Ashe's party in a pension near the Arc d'Etoile, and there they drove immediately on arriving.
The rooms were not in the pension itself, but in a house close by,—a sitting-room with six mirrors, three clocks, and a pinched little grate about a foot wide, a dining-room just large enough for a table and four chairs, and two bedrooms.
A maid called Amandine had been detailed to take charge of these rooms and serve their meals.
Dampness, as Katy afterward wrote to Clover, was the first impression they received of "gay Paris."
The tiny fire in the tiny grate had only just been lighted, and the walls and the sheets and even the blankets felt chilly and moist to the touch.
They spent their first evening in hanging the bedclothes round the grate and piling on fuel; they even set the mattresses up on edge to warm and dry!
It was not very enlivening, it must be confessed.
Amy had taken a cold, Mrs. Ashe looked worried, and Katy thought of Burnet and the safety and comfort of home with a throb of longing.
The days that ensued were not brilliant enough to remove this impression.
The November fogs seemed to have followed them across the Channel, and Paris remained enveloped in a wet blanket which dimmed and hid its usually brilliant features.
Going about in cabs with the windows drawn up, and now and then making a rush through the drip into shops, was not exactly delightful, but it seemed pretty much all that they could do.
It was worse for Amy, whose cold kept her indoors and denied her even the relaxation of the cab.
Mrs. Ashe had engaged a well-recommended elderly English maid to come every morning and take care of Amy while they were out; and with this respectable functionary, whose ideas were of a rigidly British type and who did not speak a word of any language but her own, poor Amy was compelled to spend most of her time.
Her only consolation was in persuading this serene attendant to take a part in the French lessons which she made a daily point of giving to Mabel out of her own little phrase-book.
"Wilkins is getting on, I think," she told Katy one night.
"She says 'Biscuit glace' quite nicely now.
But I never will let her look at the book, though she always wants to; for if once she saw how the words are spelled, she would never in the world pronounce them right again.
They look so very different, you know."
Katy looked at Amy's pale little face and eager eyes with a real heartache.
Her rapture when at the end of the long dull afternoons her mother returned to her was touching.
Paris was very triste to poor Amy, with all her happy facility for amusing herself; and Katy felt that the sooner they got away from it the better it would be.
So, in spite of the delight which her brief glimpses at the Louvre gave her, and the fun it was to go about with Mrs. Ashe and see her buy pretty things, and the real satisfaction she took in the one perfectly made walking-suit to which she had treated herself, she was glad when the final day came, when the belated dressmakers and artistes in jackets and wraps had sent home their last wares, and the trunks were packed.
It had been rather the fault of circumstances than of Paris; but Katy had not learned to love the beautiful capital as most Americans do, and did not feel at all as if she wanted that her "reward of virtue" should be to go there when she died!
There must be more interesting places for live people, and ghosts too, to be found on the map of Europe, she was sure.
Next morning as they drove slowly down the Champs Elysees, and looked back for a last glimpse of the famous Arch, a bright object met their eyes, moving vaguely against the mist.
It was the gay red wagon of the Bon Marche, carrying bundles home to the dwellers of some up-town street.
Katy burst out laughing.
"It is an emblem of Paris," she said,—"of our Paris, I mean.
It has been all Bon Marche and fog!"
"Miss Katy," interrupted Amy, "do you like Europe?
For my part, I was never so disgusted with any place in my life!"
"Poor little bird, her views of 'Europe' are rather dark just now, and no wonder," said her mother.
"Never mind, darling, you shall have something pleasanter by and by if I can find it for you."
"Burnet is a great deal pleasanter than Paris," pronounced Amy, decidedly.