We conducted our negotiations in the outer office, and when we had settled the whole matter, paid the money and received the ticket there arose a question about some trivial matter which the agent said he would refer to the manager. The manager’s office was across the hall, and as the agent entered it, he beckoned for us to follow. We sauntered in, one after the other, and on entering found manager and agent settling the question we had raised.
The manager raised his eyes as we entered. They rested upon us for an instant and then he started back as though somebody had drawn a revolver upon him.
“_Mon Dieu!_” he exclaimed, “and is _this_ the party for Damascus?”
“_Certainement, monsieur_,” replied the agent, waving his hand toward us, whereat we bowed to the manager.
There was the portly form of the judge in the foreground. He weighed two hundred and thirty pounds, avoirdupois, net, before breakfast, and a great deal more after a square meal.
Then came my slender frame of six feet one, with corresponding breadth of beam and depth of hold. { 262}Gustave was as tall as I but not equal to me in diameter. He happened, however, to be wearing one of my overcoats so that he bulged very respectably.
Charley and the “Doubter” were in the rear. They were fair to middling in size but the manager didn’t see them, his eyes being wholly filled with the foremost trio, and if he had been a young widow on a hunt for a husband he couldn’t have watched us more eagerly.
“Ah, _Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu!_” continued the manager; “we can never carry this party on single tickets. And where is the sixth?”
“Madame is at the hotel,” I replied, “she is so small that we call her the baby. You should see her. _Elle est très petite, très jolie, et trescharmante_.”
My endeavor to divert his attention by an appeal to a Frenchman’s admiration for a pretty woman (many persons not of French birth are troubled the same way) was of no avail. He t measured our heavy trio and returned to the charge by asserting: { 263} “It is impossible to take you for that price. We calculated upon two horses for the carriage and we must have three. What enormous men you are.”
The judge now found tongue and repelled the insinuation that he was _enorme_.