(Gimme a bite o’ yourn, my boy, I’ll gi’ you a bite o’ mine.)
He forced himself to be patient for a month, and then went to see the fertile song-writer again, who was good enough to sing him his new song beginning—
“Quand le saucisson va, tout va,”
(Sausage gone, all is gone,)—
and let him know that the ladies, finding themselves delightfully situated at the baths, had announced their intention to double the term of their sojourn.
Then it was that Roumestan remembered that he was expected for the laying of the corner-stone of the college at Chambéry, a promise he had made off-hand and which probably would have remained off-hand if Chambéry had not been in the neighborhood of Arvillard, whither, by a providential piece of chance, Jarras, the doctor and friend of the Minister, had just sent Mlle. Le Quesnoy.
Immediately upon his arrival they met each other in the garden of the hotel. She was tremendously surprised to see him, just as if that very morning she had not read the pompous announcement of his coming in the daily gazette, just as if for eight days past, through the thousand voices of its forests, its fountains, its innumerable echoes, the whole valley had not been announcing the arrival of his Excellency.
“What! you here?”
Roumestan, with his Ministerial air, imposing and stiff:
“I am here to see my sister-in-law.”