“So, then, you agree?” cried he, with a malicious twinkle in his eye that I affected not to understand.
“Yes,” said I, indolently; “I see little against it; and if nothing else, it saves me a leave-taking with Captain Hotham and Cleremont.”
“By the way, you are not to ask to see Madame; your father reminded me to tell you this. The doctors say she is not to be disturbed on any account. What a chance that I did not forget this!”
Whether it was that I was too much concerned for my own misfortunes to have a thought that was not selfish, or that another leave-taking that loomed in the distance was uppermost in my thoughts, certain it is, I felt this privation far less acutely than I might.
“She's a nice little woman, and deserves a better lot than she has met with.”
“What sort of dinner will Delorme give us?” said I, affecting the air of a man about town, but in reality throwing out the bait to lead the talk in that direction.
“First-rate, if we let him; that is, if we only say, 'Order dinner for us, Monsieur Pierre.' There's no man understands such a mandate more thoroughly.”
“Then that's what I shall say,” cried I, “as I cross his threshold.”
“He'll serve you Madeira with your soup, and Stein-berger with your fish, thirty francs a bottle, each of them.”
“Be it so. We shall drink to our pleasant journey,” said I; and I actually thought my voice had caught the tone and cadence of my father's as I spoke.