Part 9 (2/2)
”What time to-morrow shall I come?” asked Rollo.
”Yes, sir,” said the shopman, bowing again, and smiling in a very complacent manner. ”Yes, sir, to-morrow.”
”But what _time_ to-morrow?” repeated Rollo, speaking very distinctly, and emphasizing very strongly the word _time_. ”What time?”
”O, every time,” said the man; ”all time. You shall have him every time to-morrow, because you see he will make begin the work on him this day.”
”Very well,” said Rollo, ”then I will come to-morrow, about noon.”
So Rollo and Charles bade the shopman good by, and went out of the shop.
”Is that what they call speaking English?” asked Charles.
”So it seems,” said Rollo. ”Sometimes they speak a great deal worse than that, and yet call it speaking English.”
So Rollo and Charles got into the carriage again. Rollo took out his wallet, and made a memorandum of the name of the shop where he had engaged the sash, and of the street and number. The coachman sat quietly upon his seat, waiting for Rollo to finish his writing, and expecting then to receive directions where he was to go.
”If I could only find a commissioner that speaks French or English,”
said Rollo, ”I could tell him what we want, and he could tell the coachman, and in that way we should soon get home.”
”Can't you find one at some hotel?” asked Charles.
”Why, yes,” said Rollo. ”Why did not I think of that? We'll stop at the very first hotel we come to. I'll let him drive on till he comes to one.
No; I'll tell him to go to the Hotel d'Amerique. That is the only name of a hotel that I know.”
So Rollo p.r.o.nounced the words ”Hotel d'Amerique” to the coachman, and the coachman, saying, ”_Si, signore_,” drove on. In a short time he drew up before the door of the hotel where Mr. George had stopped first, on arriving in town. A waiter came to the door.
”Is there a commissioner here who speaks English or French?” asked Rollo.
”Yes, sir,” said a man who was standing by the side of the door when the carriage stopped, and who now came forward. ”_I_ speak English.”
”I want you to help us find our hotel,” said Rollo. ”We don't know the name of it. I shall know it when I see it; and so I want you to get on the box with the coachman, and direct him to drive to one hotel after another, till I see which is the right one.”
”Very well,” said the commissioner, ”I will go. Do you remember any thing about the hotel,--how it was situated.”
”There was a small, open s.p.a.ce before it,” said Rollo, ”and a fountain under a tree by the side of it.”
”It must have been the Hotel d'Angleterre,” said the commissioner.
”In going in at the front door, we went _down_ one or two steps, instead of up,” said Rollo.
”Yes,” said the commissioner, ”it was the Hotel d'Angleterre.” Then seating himself on the box by the side of the coachman, he said to the latter, addressing him in Italian,--
”Lo canda d'Ingleterra,” which is the Italian for Hotel d'Angleterre, or, as we should express it in our language, ”The English Hotel.”
The coachman drove on, and in a few minutes came to the hotel.
<script>