In the small room that opened off of that of the Gouverneur Faulkner, with a door that I knew to lead into the room of my Uncle, the General Robert, I seated myself at a table by a window which looked down upon the city spread at the foot of the Capitol hill lying shimmering in the young spring mists that drifted across its housetops.  I laid down the papers, took a pencil from a tray close beside my hand and then faced the most dreadful of any situation that I had ever brought down upon my own head.  I also faced at the same time the smiling countenance of my Buzz, who looked into the door from the room of my Uncle, the General Robert, slipped through that door and closed it gently behind him.

“Safe on first base!  The old boy of the bayonets has been called to the Governor and he’ll not be back before they both have luncheon sent in to them.  I have taken his letters and now I’m off.  What did Bill hand you?”

“Death and also destruction,” I answered in an expletive often used by my father in times of a catastrophe, and with those words I showed to my Buzz the two long papers.

“Shoo, that’s no big job.  I looked over and verified this one myself yesterday in ten minutes.  Hello, this other one is in French.  Just run it through and if it is to tally, call it; and I’ll hold this one.  We can do it in fifteen minutes.  Go ahead from the top line across.”  And my Buzz held the paper in his hand as he seated himself in readiness upon the corner of my desk beside me.

“Oh, my Buzz, I have such a mortification that I cannot add one to another of these long figures.  When I place one number to another I must use my fingers, and in this case you see that it is impossible.”  Tears I did not allow in my eyes, but they were in my voice, and I looked into the eyes of my Buzz with a great terror.  “What is it that I shall do?  I am in disgrace.”

“You complete edition of a kid, you, don’t you know I can do it for you?  That is, if you know what all these kilo things stand for in English.  Do you?” As he spoke, that kind Buzz put his hand on my shoulder with a nice rough shake.

“I do know from my governess, Madam Fournet, and I will write it all down for you, my Buzz, for whom I feel so much gratitude for help,” I answered with quickness.

“Stow the gratitude and write ’em all out.  It will take us about an hour but it is good to keep calicoes waiting occasionally,” he said, and did thereupon seat himself beside the table and draw to himself the two sheets of paper, while I quickly wrote out the table of French weights and measurements translated into English.

I did very much enjoy that hour in which my Buzz labored with a pencil and a great industry while I called to him the list of long figures and then verified as he showed me the units upon the page in the French language.  He made jokes at me between workings while he attended his cigarette and we, together, had much laughter.