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from the start. We went back into the diner and had breakfast. Leaving the dining-car I asked the conductor for tickets for the first service.
“Nothing until the fifth.”
“What’s this?”
There were never more than two servings of lunch on that train, and always plenty of places for both of them.
“They’re all reserved,” the dining-car conductor said. “There will be a fifth service at three-thirty.”
“This is serious,” I said to Bill.
“Give him ten francs.”
“Here,” I said. “We want to eat in the first service.”
The conductor put the ten francs in his pocket.
“Thank you,” he said. “I would advise you gentlemen to get some sandwiches. All the places for the first four services were reserved at the office of the company.”
“You’ll go a long way, brother,” Bill said to him in English. “I suppose if I’d given you five francs you would have advised us to jump off the train.”
“Comment?”
“Go to hell!” said Bill. “Get the sandwiches made and a bottle of wine. You tell him, Jake.”
“And send it up to the next car.” I described where we were.
In our compartment were a man and his wife and their young son.
“I suppose you’re Americans, aren’t you?” the man asked. “Having a good trip?”
“Wonderful,” said Bill.
“That’s what you want to do. Travel while you’re young. Mother and I always wanted to get over, but we had to wait a while.”
“You could have come over ten years ago, if you’d wanted to,” the wife said. “What you always said was: ‘See America first!’ I will say we’ve seen a good deal, take it one way and another.”
“Say, there’s plenty of Americans on this train,” the husband said. “They’ve got seven cars of them from Dayton, Ohio. They’ve been on a pilgrimage to Rome, and now they’re going down to Biarritz and Lourdes.”
“So, that’s what they are. Pilgrims. Goddam Puritans,” Bill said.
“What part of the States you boys from?”
“Kansas City,” I said. “He’s from Chicago.”
“You both going to Biarritz?”
“No. We’re going fishing in Spain.”
“Well, I never cared for it, myself. There’s plenty that do out where I come from, though. We got some of the best fishing in the State of Montana. I’ve been out with the boys, but I never cared for it any.”
“Mighty little fishing you did on them trips,” his wife said.
He winked at us.
“You know how the ladies are. If there’s a jug goes along, or a case of beer, they think it’s hell and damnation.”
“That’s the way men are,” his wife said to us. She smoothed her comfortable lap. “I voted against prohibition to please him, and because I like a little beer in the house, and then he talks that way. It’s a wonder they ever find any one to marry them.”
“Say,” said Bill, “do you know that gang of Pilgrim Fathers have cornered the dining-car until half past three this afternoon?”
“How do you mean? They can’t do a thing like that.”
“You try and get seats.”
“Well, mother, it looks as though we better go back and get another breakfast.”
She stood up and straightened her dress.
“Will you boys keep an eye on our things? Come on, Hubert.”
They all three went up to the wagon restaurant. A little while after they were gone a steward went through announcing the first service, and pilgrims, with their priests, commenced filing down the corridor. Our friend and his family did not come back. A waiter passed in the corridor with our sandwiches and the bottle of Chablis, and we called him in.
“You’re going to work to-day,” I said.
He nodded his head. “They start now, at ten-thirty.”
“When do we eat?”
“Huh! When do I eat?”
He left two glasses for the bottle, and we paid him for the sandwiches and tipped him.
“I’ll get the plates,” he said, “or bring them with you.”
We ate the sandwiches and drank the Chablis and watched the country out of the window. The grain was just beginning to ripen and the fields were full of poppies. The pastureland was green, and there were fine trees, and sometimes big rivers and chateaux off in the trees.
At Tours we got off and bought another bottle of wine, and when we got back in the compartment the gentleman from Montana and his wife and his son, Hubert, were sitting comfortably.
“Is there good swimming in Biarritz?” asked Hubert.
“That boy’s just crazy till he can get in the water,” his mother said. “It’s pretty hard on youngsters travelling.”
“There’s good swimming,” I said. “But it’s dangerous when it’s rough.”
“Did you get a meal?” Bill asked.
“We sure did. We set right there when they started to come in, and they must have just thought we were in the party. One of the waiters said something to us in French, and then they just sent three of them back.”
“They thought we were snappers, all right,” the man said. “It certainly shows you the power of the Catholic Church. It’s a pity you boys ain’t Catholics. You could get a meal, then, all right.”
“I am,” I said. “That’s what makes me so sore.”
Finally at a quarter past four we had lunch. Bill had been rather difficult at the last. He buttonholed a priest who was coming back with one of the returning streams of pilgrims.
“When do us Protestants get a chance to eat, father?”
“I don’t know anything about it. Haven’t you got tickets?”
“It’s enough to make a man join the Klan,” Bill said. The priest looked back at him.
Inside the dining-car the waiters served the fifth successive table d’hôte meal. The waiter who served us was soaked through. His white jacket was purple under the arms.
“He must drink a lot of wine.”
“Or wear purple undershirts.”
“Let’s ask him.”
“No. He’s too tired.”
The train stopped for half an hour at Bordeaux and we went out through the station for a little walk. There was not time to get in to the town. Afterward we passed through the Landes and watched the sun set. There were wide fire-gaps cut through the pines, and you could look up them like avenues and see wooded hills way off. About seven-thirty we had dinner and watched the country through the open window in the diner. It was all sandy pine country full of heather. There were little clearings with houses in them, and once in a while we passed a sawmill. It got dark and we could feel the country hot and sandy and dark outside of the window, and about nine o’clock we got into Bayonne. The man and his wife and Hubert all shook hands with us. They were going on to LaNegresse to change for Biarritz.
“Well, I hope you have lots of luck,” he said.
“Be careful about those