"Then wait a moment and I will get it for thee."
Good Madame Chalumeau climbed down from her chair with a generous display of fat, black woollen legs and unpinned her skirt.
"Bon! M. Bouillard sleeps the fat morning, but I can get in, and you will get a beating if you keep your excellent father waiting."
Taking the carafe, she passed under the archway that separated her house from her neighbour's, and, her broad figure actually touching the wall on either side, went to Bouillard's side-door and entered the house.
When she came out, the carafe full, Bouillard himself, fat and rosy with sleep, was standing in his shop door. "Madame Bathilde, good day to you! So you have again saved me from a commercial loss!" Désiré Bouillard had a witty way with him, his far shrewder neighbour thought—had thought for years.
And then, quite without consciousness or amusement, they enacted the little comedy that had been played by them every morning since poor Madame Bouillard died.
"And your morning coffee, M. Bouillard?"
"Tiens, mon café! Hélas non, Madame Bathilde, I am but this moment awake—what time is it?"
Just inside the door of Madame Chalumeau's shop, Au Gout Parisien, hung a clock.
"It is ten minutes to seven."