the diningroom, was what was once the stable, and what now is the
garage. Frenchmen wandered up, looked at our chauffeur (from Utica,
N. Y.) tried to diagnose the case, found we did not understand and
then moved away. But it was a twelve-cylinder American machine and
the Frenchmen, discovering that, kept coming back to it. As we sat
on the cement platform of the tavern, kicking our heels against it
and bemoaning the follies of youth which had corrupted our Freshman
and Sophomore French, there came and sat beside us a pretty woman.
She had black snappy eyes, fresh dark skin, and jet black hair, so
curly that it was almost frowsy. She listened to us for a moment,
then hopped aboard our talk like a boy flipping a street car:
"Kansas--eh? I once lived in Oklahoma City. My father ran the Bee
Hive!"

"Angels of mercy, angels of light!" This from me. "Say, will you
interpret for us?"

"Sure mike! sir," she said. And then added: "And if it's engine
trouble my husband upstairs is a chauffeur. Shall I get him?"
And when she returned with him, he fell to, glad enough to get a
look into a twelve-cylinder American car. Henry stood by him, and
with the woman acting as interlocutor, between our driver and her
husband we soon had the trouble located and the dissimulator--Henry
maintains that all engine trouble is connected in some way with a
dissimulator--rectified, and while the job was going on, he expounded
the twelve cylinders to the French, puffed on his dreadnaught pipe,
and left the lady from Oklahoma City to me. She was keen for talk.
Between her official communiques to her husband and our driver,
she got in this: