“Not me,” he said. “Back your life it’s a plant.”
“You don’t think the cher petit bébé is a little Alfred?”
“It might be,” he said.
“Only might?”
“Yes—an’ there’s lots of mites in a pound of cheese.” He laughed boisterously but uneasily.
“What did she say, exactly?” he asked.
I began to repeat, as well as I could, the phrases of the letter:
“Mon cher Alfred— Figure-toi comme je suis desolée—”
He listened with some confusion. When I had finished all I could remember, he said:
“They know how to pitch you out a letter, those Belgian lasses.”