"'Captain Brandt,' he says, 'we ain't worryin' 'bout your clo'es, and
don't you worry. You can come in your shirt, you can come in your socks,
or you can come without one damned rag--only come!'"
The Captain stopped, shook the ashes from his cigar, slowly raised
himself to his feet, and reached for his hat.
"Did you go, Captain?" I asked.
The Captain looked at me for a moment with one of those quizzical
glances which so often light up his face when something amuses him, and
said, as he blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling:
"Well, I didn't forget my manners. When it got dark--dark, mind ye--I
went up and sat on the piazza and had a smoke with 'em--Admiral and all.
But I didn't go to dinner--not in them pants."
A PROCESSION OF UMBRELLAS
I
This all happened on the banks of the Seine, above St. Cloud--above
Suresne, in fact, or rather its bridge--the new one that has pieced out
the old one with the quaint stone arches that we love.
A silver-gray haze, a pure French gray, hung over the river, softening
the sky-line of the near-by hills, and making ghosts of a row of
gendarme poplars guarding the opposite bank.
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