Sitting at work at his table, Simon looked out of the window with a thankful heart.
“I’m one franc out,” murmured Mrs. Beaulieu. Pencil to lip, she regarded the cornice thoughtfully. “Now what did I spend that on?”
Her husband surveyed her profile with some emotion. He may be forgiven. Its beauty was really startling.
At length—
“Cream?” he suggested.
“No. I’ve got that down. Oh, I know. There was a poor woman at the butter-stall with the cutest little boy. She was getting the cheapest butter, and when they told her eggs were seven francs—they’ve gone up, you know—she wouldn’t have any. And there was I, getting the best butter and a pot of honey and some cream. It seemed so awful. . . . And the little boy was watching me with great, big eyes. So I asked him if he liked honey. . . . D’you know, wrapped up in paper he’d got a little empty jar? And his mother said that he always took it when he went to the market with her, and that if ever she had a little money over, then they spent it on honey, and his little jar was filled. She said he was wonderful—never complained. For weeks he’d brought his jar back empty, but he’d never cried or asked for anything. And he was only four. . . . You ought to have seen his face while it was being filled.”
“I’d rather ’ve seen yours,” said Simon Beaulieu. His wife blew him a kiss. “By the way, I’ve always meant to ask you and I’ve always forgotten till now. That night at Breathless, as we were going in, you said I was unlike my namesake because he would have plunged.”
“I remember,” said Patricia.
“And then you qualified that, and said that in a way we were alike.”
“Yes.”