If getting billets is William's job, getting rid of them is the Babe's affair. William, like myself, has far too great a mastery of the _patois_ to handle delicate situations with success. For instance, when the fanner approaches me with tidings that my troopers have burnt two ploughshares and a crowbar and my troop horses have masticated a brick wall I engage him in palaver, with the result that we eventually part, I under the impression that the incident is closed, and he under the impression that I have promised to buy him a new farm. This leads to all sorts of international complications.
The Babe, on the other hand, regards a knowledge of French as immoral and only knows enough of it to order himself a drink. He is also gifted with a slight stutter, which under the stress of a foreign language becomes chronic. So when we evacuate a billet William furnishes the Babe with enough money to compensate the farmer for all damages we have not committed, and then effaces himself. Donning a bright smile the Babe approaches the farmer and presses the lucre into his honest palm.
"Hi," says the worthy fellow, "what is this, then? One hundred francs! Where is the seventy-four francs, six centimes for the fleas your dog stole? The two hundred francs, three centimes for the indigestion your rations gave my pig? The eight thousand and ninety-nine francs, five centimes insurance money I should have collected if your brigands had not stopped my barn from burning?--and all the other little damages, three million, eight hundred thousand and forty-four francs, one centime in all--where is it, _hein_?"
"Ec-c-coutez une moment," the Babe begins, "Jer p-p-poovay expliquay tut--tut--tut--tut--sh-sh-shiss--" says he, loosening his stammer at rapid fire, popping and hissing, rushing and hitching like a red-hot machine-gun with a siphon attachment. In five minutes the farmer is white in the face and imploring the Babe to let by-gones be by-gones. "N-n-not a b-bit of it, old t-top," says the Babe. "Jer p-p-poovay exp-p-pliquay b-b-bub-bub-bub--" and away it goes again like a combined steam-riveter and shower-bath, like the water coming down at Lodore. No farmer however hardy has been known to stand more than twenty minutes of this. A quarter-of-an-hour usually sees him bolting and barring himself into the cellar, with the Babe blowing him kisses of fond farewell through the keyhole.