“You know I gave you my last piece yesterday.”
“Then, if you have the money,” said the child to the woman whom Beausire called indifferently Nicole or Oliva, “give me a penny to buy candy.”
“There are two cents, you naughty boy, and mind you do not fall in sliding down the bannisters.”
“Thank you, dear mother,” said the boy, capering for joy and holding out his hand.
“Come here till I set your hat on and adjust your sash: it must not be said that Captain Beausire let his son race about the streets in disorder—though it is all the same to him, the heartless fellow! I should die of shame!”
At the risk of whatever the neighbors might say against the heir to the Beausire name, the boy would have dispensed with the hat and band, of which he recognized the use before the other urchins did the freshness and beauty. But as the arrangement of his dress was a condition of the gift, the young Hector had to yield to it.
He consoled himself by taunting his father with the coin by thrusting it up under his nose; absorbed in his figuring the parent merely smiled at the pretty freak.
Soon they heard his timid step, though quickened by gluttony, descending the stairs.
“Now then, Captain Beausire,” snapped the woman after a pause, “your wits must lift us out of this miserable position, or else I must have recourse to mine.”
She spoke with a toss of the head as much as to say: “A lady of my lovely face never dies of starvation, never fear!”