The boy rushed into the room, holding a sugarstick in his mouth, hugging under his left arm a bag of sugarplums, and showing in his right hand a gold coin which shone in the candle glimmer like the North Star.
“Goodness of heaven, what has occurred?” cried Nicole, slamming the door to.
She covered his gluey face with kisses—mothers never being disgusted, from their caresses seeming to purify everything.
“The matter is a genuine louis of gold, worth full value of twenty-four livres,” said Beausire, skillfully obtaining the piece.
“Where did you pick that up that I may go for the others, my duck?” he inquired.
“I never found it, papa: it was give to me,” replied the boy. “A kind gentleman give it me.”
Ready as Beausire to ask who this donor was, Nicole was prudent from experience on account of Captain Beausire’s jealousy. She confined herself to repeating:
“A gentleman?”
“Yes, mamma dear,” rejoined the child, crunching the barley-sugar between his teeth: “a gentleman who came into the grocer’s store where I was, and he says: ‘God bless me, but, master, do I not behold a young gentleman whose name is De Beausire, whom you have the honor of attending to at the present time?'”
Beausire perked up and Nicole shrugged her shoulders.