Our opinion is, he don't know beef from hedgehog; and let him trim 'em, and egg 'em,' and bread-crumb 'em, and pound the mess all his might, and then tak' and roll 'em into balls, we say we wun't, for we can't make English muscle out o' that."-- And Alphonse, quite indifferent to the vulgar: "He! mais pensez donc au Papa, Monsieur Henri-Richie, sans doute il a une sante de fer: mais encore faut-il lui menager le suc gastrique, pancreatique...."' 'Ay, ay!' laughed my father; 'what sets you thinking of Alphonse ?' 'I suppose because I shall have to be speaking French in an hour.' 'German, Richie, German.' 'But these Belgians speak French.' 'Such French as it is.

You will, however, be engaged in a German conversation first, I suspect.' 'Very well, I'll stumble on.

I don't much like it.' 'In six hours from this second of time, Richie, boy, I undertake to warrant you fonder of the German tongue than of any other spoken language.' I looked at him.

He gave me a broad pleasant smile, without sign of a jest lurking in one corner.
The scene attracted me.

Laughing fishwife faces radiant with sea-bloom in among the weedy pier-piles, and sombre blue-cheeked officers of the douane, with their double row of buttons extending the breadth of their shoulders.