She chatted with Bert Chester, and asked him many questions about the trip on which he was starting.

“I don’t know just where we are going,” he said.  “I leave all that to Oram.  The rest of us don’t care, and Oram loves to spend hours hunting up reasons why we should go to this small village that is picturesque, or that tiny hamlet that is historic.  I’m sure the queer little French towns will all look alike to me, and I’m not awfully keen about such things anyhow.  I go for the out-door life, and the swift motion, and the fresh air and all that sort of thing.”

“I love that part of it, too,” said Patty, “but also I like seeing the funny little towns with their narrow streets and squealing dogs.  I think I have never been through a French village that wasn’t just spilling over with squealing dogs.”

“That’s because you always go through them in an automobile.  If you were on a walking tour now, you’d find the dogs all asleep.  But the paramount idea in a French dog’s brain is that he was made for the purpose of waking up and barking at motor cars.”

“Well, they’re most faithful to what they consider their duty, then,” said Patty, laughing, for even as she spoke they were whizzing through a straggling, insignificant little village, and dogs of all sizes and colours seemed to spring up suddenly from nowhere at all, and act as if about to devour the car and its occupants.

But notwithstanding the dogs, the villages were exceedingly picturesque, and Patty loved to drive through them slowly, that she might see glimpses of the life of the people.  And it was almost always necessary to go slowly, for the streets were so narrow, and the sidewalks a mere shelf, so that pedestrians often walked in the road.  This made it difficult to drive rapidly, and, moreover, many of the streets were steep and hilly.

“It never seems to matter,” observed Patty, “whether you’re going out of Paris or coming in; it’s always uphill, and never down.  I think that after you’ve climbed a hill, they whisk it around the other way, so that you’re obliged to climb it again on your return.”

“Of course they do,” agreed Bert; “you can see by the expression of the people that they’re chuckling at us now, and they’ll chuckle again when we pass this way to-night, still climbing.”

Neither of the cars in which our party travelled were good hill-climbers, although they could go fast enough on the level.  But nobody cared, and notwithstanding some delays, the ground was rapidly covered.

“There’s one town I want to go through,” said Patty, “but I’m not sure it’s in our route.  It’s called Noisy-le-Roi.  Of course, I know that, really, Noisy is not pronounced in the English fashion, but I like to think that it is, and I call it so myself.”

“There’s no harm in that; I suppose a free-born American citizen has a right to pronounce French any way she chooses, and I like that way myself.  Noisy-le-Roi sounds like an abode of the Mad Monarch, and you expect to see the king and all his courtiers and subjects dancing madly around or playing hilarious games.”