Margherite passed from the door of the
building proper to the little washing shed. As the sentinel's back was
turned I saluted her, and she looked up and smiled pleasantly. And
then--a hand leapt quietly forward from the wall, just to my right; the
fingers clenched gently upon one-half a newly broken cheese; the hand
moved silently in my direction, cheese and all, pausing when perhaps six
inches from my nose. I took the cheese from the hand, which departed as
if by magic; and a little later had the pleasure of being joined at my
window by The Zulu, who was brushing cheese crumbs from his long slender
Mandarin mustaches, and who expressed profound astonishment and equally
profound satisfaction upon noting that I too had been enjoying the
pleasures of cheese. Not once, but several times, this Excalibur
appearance startled B. and me: in fact the extreme modesty and
incomparable shyness of The Zulu found only in this procedure a
satisfactory method of bestowing presents upon his two friends ... I
would I could see that long hand once more, the sensitive fingers poised
upon a half-camembert; the bodiless arm swinging gently and surely with a
derrick-like grace and certainty in my direction....
Not very long after The Zulu's arrival occurred an incident which I give
with pleasure because it shows the dauntless and indomitable, not to say
intrepid, stuff of which _plantons_ are made.
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