Page:Wha Katy Did Next - Coolidge (1886).djvu/142

 boat come in,—workmen, peasants, women, children, soldiers, custom-house officers, moving to and fro,—and all this crowd were talking all at once and all were talking French!

I don't know why this should have startled her as it did. She knew, of course, that people of different countries were liable to be found speaking their own languages; but somehow the spectacle of the chattering multitude, all seeming so perfectly at ease with their preterits and subjunctives and never once having to refer to Ollendorf or a dictionary, filled her with a sense of dismayed surprise.

"Good gracious!" she said to herself, "even the babies understand it!" She racked her brains to recall what she had once known of French, but very little seemed to have survived the horrors of the night!

"Oh dear! what is the word for trunk-key?" she asked herself. "They will all begin to ask questions, and I shall not have a word to say; and Mrs. Ashe will be even worse off, I know." She saw the red-trousered