Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/255

 the dull, incommunicative travellers of the second class and try my chances among the loquacious third-class voyagers. Here I fell into the very midst of good-humoured, general conversation, and learnt more about the stirring local events of Cognac and Angoulême than I should have known after a week's residence in either town. A young girl with a round, baby face addressed me in excellent English, so evidently beaming with the joy of being able to do so that I lavished my congratulations instantly, and learnt that she had been for two years a nurse in Warwickshire, where she had picked up fluent English and met with so much kindness and innocent pleasures of all sorts that she adored the name of England ever afterwards. Certainly not a sister of M. Mirbeau's ineffable Mlle. Celestine, this dear, sentimental little maid of Angoulême. It was a case of attraction at first sight, for she begged of me to use her room instead of going to a hotel, and be her guest at her father's, a little watchmaker, during the three days I projected staying at Angoulême. I accepted, enchanted at a proposal that offered me such an out-of-the-way and original glimpse of a French town. "Sweetness and light" are words that best describe this delicious little creature. She was like a round, innocent kitten, all gaiety and brightness, and sparkled and danced along the streets beside me, crazy with the delight of