This particular cafe was found, in its physical aspects, to be typical of the breed and district.  It was small, crowded, overheated, underlighted, and stuffy to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale drink and cheap perfume.  As we entered a wrangle was going on among a group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students—­almost a sure sign that they were not art students.  An undersized girl dressed in a shabby black-and-yellow frock was doing a Spanish dance on a cleared space in the middle of the floor.  We knew her instantly for a Spanish dancer, because she had a fan in one hand and a pair of castanets in the other.  Another girl, dressed as a pierrot, was waiting to do her turn when the Spanish dancer finished.  Weariness showed through the lacquer of thick cosmetic on her peaked little face.  An orchestra of three pieces sawed wood steadily; and at intervals, to prove that these were gay and blithesome revels, somebody connected with the establishment threw small, party-colored balls of celluloid about.  But what particularly caught our attention was the presence in a far corner of two little darkies in miniature dress suits, both very wally of eye, very brown of skin, and very shaved as to head, huddled together there as though for the poor comfort of physical contact.  As soon as they saw us they left their place and sidled up, tickled beyond measure to behold American faces and hear American voices.

They belonged, it seemed, to a troupe of jubilee singers who had been imported from the States for the delectation of French audiences.  At night, after their work at a vaudeville theater was done, the members of their company were paired off and sent about to the cafes to earn their keep by singing ragtime songs and dancing buck dances.  These two were desperately, pathetically homesick.  One of them blinked back the tears when he told us, with the plaintive African quaver in his voice, how long they had been away from their own country and how happy they would be to get back to it again.

“We suttin’ly is glad to heah somebody talkin’ de reg’lar New ’Nited States talk, same as we does,” he said.  “We gits mighty tired of all dis yere French jabberin’!”

“Yas, suh,” put in his partner; “dey meks a mighty fuss over cullud folks over yere; but ’tain’t noways lak home.  I comes from Bummin’ham, Alabama, myse’f.  Does you gen’lemen know anybody in Bummin’ham?”

They were the first really wholesome creatures who had crossed our paths that night.  They crowded up close to us and there they stayed until we left, as grateful as a pair of friendly puppies for a word or a look.  Presently, though, something happened that made us forget these small dark compatriots of ours.  We had had sandwiches all round and a bottle of wine.  When the waiter brought the check it fell haply into the hands of the one person in our party who knew French and—­what was an even more valuable accomplishment under the present circumstances—­knew the intricate French system of computing a bill.  He ran a pencil down the figures.  Then he consulted the price list on the menu and examined the label on the neck of the wine bottle, and then he gave a long whistle.  “What’s the trouble?” asked one of us.