A CANARY FOR ONE. friend, told me once, 'No foreigner can make an American girl a good husband.

friend, told me once, 'No foreigner can make an American girl a good husband."

" No, " said my wife, " 1 suppose not."

The American lady admired my wife's travelling-coat, and it turned out that the American lady had bought her own clothes for twenty years now from the same maison de couture²¹ in the Rue Saint Honored

They had her measurements, and a vendeuse²³ who knew her and her tastes picked the dresses out for her and they were sent to America. They came at the post-office near where she lived up-town²⁴ in New York, and the duty was never exorbitant because they opened the dresses there in the post-office to appraise them and they were always very simple-looking and with no gold lace nor ornaments that would make the dresses look expensive. Before the present vendeuse, named Therese, there had been another ven­deuse named Amelie. Altogether there had only been these two in the twenty years. It had always been the same couturier²⁵. Prices, however, had gone up. The exchange, though, equalized that. They had her daughter's mea­surements now too. She was grown up and there was not much chance of their changing now.

The train was now coining into Paris. The fortifications were levelled but grass had not grown. There were many cars standing on tracks — brown wooden restaurant-cars and brown wooden sleeping-cars that would go to Italy at five o'clock that night, if that train still left at five; the cars were marked Paris-Rome; and cars, with seats on the roofs, that went back and forth to the suburbs with, at certain hours, people in all the seats and on the roofs, if that were the way it were still done, and passing were the white walls and many windows of houses. Nothing had eaten any breakfast.

" Americans make the best husbands, " the American lady said to my wife. I was getting down the bags. " American men are the only men in the world to marry."

" How long ago did you leave Vevey? " asked my wife.

" Two years ago this fall. It's her, you know, that I'm taking the canary to."

" Was the man your daughter was in love with a Swiss? "

" Yes, " said the American lady. " He was from a very good family in Vevey. He was going to be an engineer. They met there in Vevey. They used to go on long walks together."

" I know Vevey, " said my wife. " We were there on our honey-moon."

" Were you really? That must have been lovely. I had no idea, of course, that she'd fall in love with him."

A CANARY FOR ONE

" It was a very lovely place, " said my wife.

" Yes, " said the American lady. " Isn't it lovely? Where did you stop there? "

" We stayed at the Trois Couronnes²⁶, " said my wife.

" It's such a fine old hotel, " said the American lady.

" Yes, " said my wife. " We had a very fine room and in the fall the country²⁷ was lovely."

" Were you there in the fall? "

" Yes, " said my wife.

We were passing three cars that had been in a wreck. They were splin­tered open and the roofs sagged in.

" Look, " I said. " There's been a wreck."

The American lady looked and saw the last car. " I was afraid of just that all night, " she said, " I have terrific presentiments about things sometimes. I'll never travel on a rapide again at night. There must be other comfort­able trains that don't go so fast."

Then the train was in the dark of the Gare de Lyons²⁸, and then stopped and porters came up to the windows. I handed bags through the window,.... we were out on the dim longness of the platform, and the American lady put herself in charge of one of three men from Cook's²⁹ who said: " Just a moment, madame, and I'll look for your name."

The porter brought a truck and piled on the baggage, and my wife said good-by and I said good-by to the American lady, whose name had been found by the man from Cook's on a typewritten page in a sheaf of typewrit­ten pages which he replaced in his pocket.

We followed the porter with the truck down the long cement platform beside the train. At the end was a gate and a man took the tickets.

We were returning to Paris to set up separate residences³⁰.

Notes:

1. 2. 3. 4.

canary [кэ'пеэп] = canary-bird

Palermo (рэ 'b: mou] — the largest city and port of Sicily

lit salon (French) — sleeping car (see note # 8)

There was no breeze came through = There was no breeze coming

through

Marseilles [ma: 'seilzl — a seaport in south-eastern France on the

Mediterranean [medits 'remjan]

The Daily Mail — a British mass-circulation newspaper; supports the conservative

party

103A CANARY FOR ONE

7. Evian water — mineral water, bottled and exported from Evian-les-Bains, a fashionable health resort in south-eastern France on the shore of the Lake of Geneva [dji'ni: vs]

8. car (AmE) = carriage {BrE).

Note other instances of American English and their British counterparts: AmE: porter; wreck; fall BrE: attendant; crash; autumn

9. Cannes [kEen] — a resort on the French Riviera famous also for its annual Film Festivals

10. gotten (AmE) = got (BrE)