Ernest Hemingway

ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES
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CHAPTER XXVI

THEY sat there at the table and watched the early stormy light over the Canal. The grey had turned to a yellow grey, now, with the sun, and the waves were working against the outgoing tide.

“Mummy says she can’t live here too long at any time because there are no trees,” the girl said. “That’s why she goes to the country.”

“That’s why everyone goes to the country,” the Colo­nel said. “We could plant a few trees if we found a place with a big enough garden.”

“I like Lombardy poplars and plane trees the best, but I am still quite uneducated.”

“I like them, and cypresses and chestnut trees. The real chestnut and the horse-chestnut. But you will never see trees, Daughter, until we go to America. Wait till you see a white pine or a ponderosa pine.”

“Will we see them when we make the long trip and stop at all the filling stations or comfort stations or what­ever they are called?”

“Lodges and Tourist Camps,” the Colonel said. “Those others we stop at; but not for the night.”

“I want so much for us to roll up to a comfort station and plank down my money and tell them to fill her up and check the oil, Mac, the way it is in American books or in the films.”

“That’s a filling station.”

“Then what is a comfort station?”

“Where you go, you know—”

“Oh,” the girl said and blushed. “I’m sorry. I want to learn American so much. But I suppose I shall say bar­barous things the way you do sometimes in Italian.”

“It is an easy language. The further West you go the straighter and the easier it becomes.”

The Gran Maestro brought the breakfast and the odor of it, although it did not spread through the room, due to the silver covers on the dishes, came to them steady and as broiled bacon and kidneys, with the dark lusterless smell of grilled mushrooms added.

“It looks lovely,” the girl said. “Thank you very much, Gran Maestro. Should I talk American?” she asked the Colonel. She extended her hand to the Gran Maestro lightly, and fastly, so that it darted as a rapier does, and said, “Put it there, Pal. This grub is tops.”

The Gran Maestro said, “Thank you, my lady.”

“Should I have said chow instead of grub?” the girl asked the Colonel.

“They are really interchangeable.”

“Did they talk like that out West when you were a boy? What would you say at breakfast?”

“Breakfast was served, or offered up, by the cook. He (...)

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