mean ne vous... that is to say, quel est le raison...”      

       He broke off here, because at this point Jules began to explain. He explained very rapidly and at considerable length. The fact that neither of his hearers understood a word of what he was saying appeared not to have impressed itself upon him. Or, if he gave a thought to it, he dismissed the objection as trifling. He wanted to explain, and he explained. Words rushed from him like water from a geyser. Sounds which you felt you would have been able to put a meaning to if he had detached them from the main body and repeated them slowly, went swirling down the stream and were lost for ever.     

       “Stop him!” said Sally firmly.     

       The red-haired young man looked as a native of Johnstown might have looked on being requested to stop that city's celebrated flood.     

       “Stop him?”      

       “Yes. Blow a whistle or something.”      

       Out of the depths of the young man's memory there swam to the surface a single word—a word which he must have heard somewhere or read somewhere: a legacy, perhaps, from long-vanished school-days.     

       “Zut!” he barked, and instantaneously Jules turned himself off at the main. There was a moment of dazed silence, such as might occur in a boiler-factory if the works suddenly shut down.     

       “Quick! Now you've got him!” cried Sally. “Ask him what he's talking about—if he knows, which I doubt—and tell him to speak slowly. Then we shall get somewhere.”      

       The young man nodded intelligently. The advice was good.     

       “Lentement,” he said. “Parlez lentement. Pas si—you know what I mean—pas si dashed vite!”      

       “Ah-a-ah!” cried Jules, catching the idea on the fly. “Lentement. Ah, oui, lentement.”      

       There followed a lengthy conversation which, while conveying nothing to Sally, seemed intelligible to the red-haired linguist.     

 Prev. P 29/224 next