"Je pr—"
But here Taffy took the Laird by the arm and dragged him by force out of this too seductive siren's cave.
The Laird told her where to send his purchases; and with many expressions of love and good-will on both sides, they tore themselves away from Monsieur et Madame Vinard.
The Laird, however, rushed back for a minute, and hurriedly whispered to Madame Vinard: "Oh—er—le piay de Trilby—sur le mure, vous savvy—avec le verre et toot le reste—coopy le mure—comprenny?... Combiang?"
"Ah, monsieur!" said Madame Vinard—"c'est un peu difficile, vous savez—couper un mur comme ça! On parlera au propriétaire si vous voulez, et ça pourrait peut-être s'arranger, si c'est en bois! seulement il fau—"
"Je prong!" said the Laird, and waved his hand in farewell.
They went up the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, and found that about twenty yards of a high wall had been pulled down—just at the bend where the Laird had seen the last of Trilby, as she turned round and kissed her hand to him—and they beheld, within, a quaint and ancient long-neglected garden; a gray old garden, with tall, warty, black-boled trees, and damp, green, mossy paths that lost themselves under the brown and yellow leaves and mould and muck which had drifted into heaps here and there, the accumulation of years—a queer old faded pleasance, with wasted bowers and dilapidated carved stone benches and weather-beaten discolored marble statues—noseless, armless, earless fauns and hamadryads! And at the end of it, in a tumble-down state of utter ruin, a still inhabited little house, with shabby blinds and window-curtains, and broken window-panes mended with brown paper—a Pavillon de Flore, that must have been quite beautiful a hundred years ago—the once mysterious love-resort of long-buried abbés with light hearts, and well-forgotten lords and ladies gay—red-heeled, patched, powdered, frivolous, and shameless, but oh! how charming to the imagination of the nineteenth century! And right through the ragged lawn, (where lay, upset in the long dewy grass, a broken doll's perambulator by a tattered Punchinello) went a desecrating track made by cart-wheels and horses' hoofs; and this, no doubt, was to be a new street—perhaps, as Taffy suggested, "La Rue Neuve des Mauvais Ladres!" (The New Street of the Bad Lepers!).
"Ah, Taffy!" sententiously opined the Laird, with his usual wink at Little Billee, "I've no doubt the old lepers were the best, bad as they were!"
"I'm quite sure of it!" said Taffy, with sad and sober conviction and a long-drawn sigh. "I only wish I had a chance of painting one—just as he really was!"