been though in other respects a perfect Native, and regarding the Major's
fluency I should have been of the opinion judging French by English that
there might have been a greater choice of words in the language though
still I must admit that if I hadn't known him when he asked a military
gentleman in a gray cloak what o'clock it was I should have took him for
a Frenchman born.

Before going on to look after my Legacy we were to make one regular day
in Paris, and I leave you to judge my dear what a day _that_ was with
Jemmy and the Major and the telescope and me and the prowling young man
at the inn door (but very civil too) that went along with us to show the
sights. All along the railway to Paris Jemmy and the Major had been
frightening me to death by stooping down on the platforms at stations to
inspect the engines underneath their mechanical stomachs, and by creeping
in and out I don't know where all, to find improvements for the United
Grand Junction Parlour, but when we got out into the brilliant streets on
a bright morning they gave up all their London improvements as a bad job
and gave their minds to Paris. Says the prowling young man to me "Will I
speak Inglis No?" So I says "If you can young man I shall take it as a
favour," but after half-an-hour of it when I fully believed the man had
gone mad and me too I says "Be so good as fall back on your French sir,"
knowing that then I shouldn't have the agonies of trying to understand
him, which was a happy release. Not that I lost much more than the rest
either, for I generally noticed that when he had described something very
long indeed and I says to Jemmy "What does he say Jemmy?" Jemmy says
looking with vengeance in his eye "He is so jolly indistinct!" and that
when he had described it longer all over again and I says to Jemmy "Well
Jemmy what's it all about?" Jemmy says "He says the building was repaired
in seventeen hundred and four, Gran."