Frederica de Mille

Peace Corps bride

CHAPTER ONE

Dinner at an excellent French restaurant is a pleasant surprise anytime. In Africa, it is doubly so. Yet, in spite of certain preconceptions of mud-and waddle huts and savage natives which honestly do still exist in the interior there are any number of surprisingly good French restaurants to be found in the mostly modern capitals of territories formerly under the suzerainty of the French Colonial Administration. In Dakar the capital of Senegal, and a city with a number of first-class restaurants three of the most outstanding are.. Croix du Sud, Hotel N'Gor, and Chez Marie-Louise. It was in the latter that young Doug and Penny Glasser sat waiting for their evening's dinner companion, Howard and Carol North.

"Well, darling?" the young husband smiled, exhibiting a row of even white teeth. "Have you made up your mind yet?"

"Gee, Doug," Penny responded, "I can't decide everything sounds so scrumptious!" Doug smiled indulgently. "Maybe we should wait for the Norths," he offered.

Penny wrinkled her nose and brightened. "Not on your life, Doug! Besides, they said for us to go ahead and order since they're liable to be a while at Major M'Bonu's office."

Doug laughed openly, then fell into his fair-to-middlin' Humphrey Bogart imitation. "Okay, kid, I get the picture." He dropped back into his own voice. "You want to ask a waiter what's good?"

Penny nodded in the affirmative, then blushed when her incorrigible tease of a husband snapped his finger and shouted a very touristy, "Garcon!"

Immediately, an impeccably liveried waiter with a face as black as night appeared at their table. "Is monsieur ready to order now?" he asked in flawless French.

"What do you recommend?" Doug followed in a broken facsimile of the same language.

"Our chef is an artist with langouste."

"Langouste?" Penny parroted. "What's that, Doug?"