“Wait a moment; it’s six thousand francs extra.”
“It’s all the same to me, by Jove!” she cried, bursting into a laugh. “Hasn’t my little rough got the rhino?”
Nowadays among her intimates she always spoke thus of Count Muffat, and the gentlemen had ceased to inquire after him otherwise.
“Did you see your little rough last night?” they used to say.
“Dear me, I expected to find the little rough here!”
It was a simple familiarity enough, which, nevertheless, she did not as yet venture on in his presence.
Labordette began rolling up the designs as he gave the final explanations. The goldsmiths, he said, were undertaking to deliver the bed in two months’ time, toward the twenty-fifth of December, and next week a sculptor would come to make a model for the Night. As she accompanied him to the door Nana remembered the baker and briskly inquired:
“By the by, you wouldn’t be having ten louis about you?”
Labordette made it a solemn rule, which stood him in good stead, never to lend women money. He used always to make the same reply.
“No, my girl, I’m short. But would you like me to go to your little rough?”