Anyway, he knows all about it."
"Then what?" With hungry eyes they form a circle around the
story-teller.
"Egypt, you say, we shall go to? Don't know it. I know there were
Pharaohs there at the time when I was a kid and went to school, but
since--"
"To Egypt!" The idea finds unconscious anchorage in their minds.
"Ah, non," says Blaire, "for I get sea-sick. Still, it doesn't last,
sea-sickness. Oui, but what would my good lady say?"
"What about it? She'll get used to it. You see niggers, and streets
full of big birds, like we see sparrows here."
"But haven't we to go to Alsace?"
"Yes," says the post-orderly, "there are some who think so at the
Pay-office."
"That'd do me well enough."
But common sense and acquired experience regain the upper hand and
put the visions to flight. We have been told so often that we were
going a long way off, so often have we believed it, so often been
undeceived! So, as if at a moment arranged, we wake up.
"It's all my eye--they've done it on us too often. Wait before
believing--and don't count a crumb's worth on it."
We reoccupy our corner. Here and there a man bears in his hand the
light momentous burden of a letter.
"Ah," says Tirloir, "I must be writing. Can't go eight days without
writing."
"Me too," says Eudore, "I must write to my p'tit' femme."
"Is she all right, Mariette?"
"Oui, oui, don't fret about Mariette."
A few have already settled themselves for correspondence.
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