point of asking him some questions, when he anticipated their desire.

"God forgive me for swearing, but it is too provoking to meet these
loafers in respectable quarters. The ancients used to think their
journey spoiled if they met an unclean animal on starting, and I feel as
if my whole stay here would go wrong after meeting these animals the
first thing in the first morning."

"_Mais qu'est ce qu'ils sont donc, ces vaut-riens?_" asked Le Roi.

"The Frenchman is a deported convict, who is doing us the honor to serve
out his time here; the Irishman is a refugee, I believe. They have come
here to report for _The Sewer_."

They cooled their virtuous indignation in the spring, and were
returning.

"Hallo, Benson! Hallo! I thought that was you!" shouted somebody, a
quarter of a mile off, from the hotel steps.

"Ah," said Harry, "I understand now why you heard so much noise this
morning. Bird Simpson has arrived."

Mr. Simpson, popularly known as "the bird" (_why_ no one could tell
exactly, but people often get such names attached to them for some
inexplicable reason), came on a half-run to meet them. He was a tall,
showy, and rather handsome, though not particularly graceful man; very
flashily got up in a blue cutaway with gilt buttons, wide blue stripes
down the sides of his white trousers, a check shirt of enormous crimson
pattern, and a red and white cravat; no waistcoat, and wide embroidered
braces, the work of some lady friend. He seemed to have dressed himself
on the principle of the tricolor, and to have carried it out in his
face--his cheeks being very red, his eyes very blue, and his hair very
white. After having pump-handled Benson's arm for some time, he made an
attack on Le Roi, whom he just knew by name, and inquired if he had just
come _de l'autre cote_, meaning the other side of the Atlantic,
according to a common New-York idiom; but the Vicomte not unnaturally
took it to mean from the other side of the road, and gave a
corresponding answer in English as felicitous as Mr. Simpson's French.
Then he digressed upon Ashburner, whom he saw to be an Englishman, in so
pointed a manner, that Benson was obliged to introduce them; and the
introduction was followed by an invitation on Simpson's part to the
company to take a drink, which they did, somewhat to the consternation
of the Frenchman, who knew not what to make of iced brandy and mint
before breakfast. Then Simpson, having primed himself for the morning