“If the missus will let me,” said he.
“Missus? Your wife? You are married, my dear Reginald?” Aristide leaped, in his unexpected fashion, from his chair and almost embraced him. “Ah, but you are happy, you are lucky. It was always like that. You open your mouth and the larks fall ready roasted into it! My congratulations. And she is here, in this hotel, your wife? Tell me about her.”
Batterby lit his cigar. “She’s nothing to write home about,” he said, modestly. “She’s French.”
“French? No—you don’t say so!” exclaimed Aristide, in ecstasy.
“Well, she was brought up in France from her childhood, but her parents were Finns. Funny place for people to come from—Finland—isn’t it? You could never expect it—might just as well think of ’em coming from Lapland. She’s an orphan. I met her in London.”
William J. Locke: The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol
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