"Nong."
"C'est bien dommage! Est-ce qu'elle dit ses prières, le soir, en se couchant?"
A fierce look came into Little Billee's eyes and a redness to his cheeks, and this particular form of overture to friendship was abandoned.
Presently Lambert said, "Si nous mettions l'Anglais à l'échelle?"
Little Billee, who had been warned, knew what this ordeal meant.
They tied you to a ladder, and carried you in procession up and down the court-yard, and if you were nasty about it they put you under the pump.
During the next rest it was explained to him that he must submit to this indignity, and the ladder (which was used for reaching the high shelves round the studio) was got ready.
Little Billee smiled a singularly winning smile, and suffered himself to be bound with such good-humor that they voted it wasn't amusing, and unbound him, and he escaped the ordeal by ladder.
Taffy had also escaped, but in another way. When they tried to seize him he took up the first rapin that came to hand, and, using him as a kind of club, he swung him about so freely and knocked down so many students and easels and drawing-boards with him, and made such a terrific rumpus, that the whole studio had to cry for "pax!" Then he performed feats of strength of such a surprising kind that the memory of him remained in Carrel's studio for years, and he became a legend, a tradition, a myth! It is now said (in what still remains of the quartier latin) that he was seven feet high, and used to juggle with the massier and model as with a pair of billiard balls, using only his left hand!
To return to Little Billee. When it struck twelve, the cakes and rum punch arrived—a very goodly sight that put every one in a good temper.