Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 2.djvu/119

Rh charming boots to Madame, my wife, who would weep for joy at this touching tableau.

With this melodramatic valedictory, he suffered the guests to depart, and the last they saw of him, he was still waving a dirty napkin as he stood at the gate, big, bland, and devoted to the end, though the drops stood thick upon his manly brow, and the sun glared fiercely on his uncovered head.

"I shall write an article on garçons when I get home," said Lavinia, who was always planning great works and never executing them. "We have known such a nice variety, and all have been so good to us that we owe them a tribute. You remember the dear, tow-headed one at Morlaix, who insisted on handing us dishes of snails, and papers of pins with which to pick out the repulsive delicacy?"

"Yes, and the gloomy one with black linen sleeves who glowered at us, sighed gustily in our ears, and anointed us with gravy as he waited at table," added Amanda.

"Don't forget the dark one, with languid, Spanish eyes and curly hair, on the boat going down the Rance. How picturesque and polite he was, to be sure, as he kept picking up our beer-bottles when