“Tell me, my dear boy,” bleated old De Nani, who wanted to get the affair over and done with before dinner, “could you till the end of next month, when my rents from Normandy will be due—could you accommodate me with a little loan?”
“Yes, rather,” said Toto. “How much?”
“Seven hundred and fifty francs would save me the necessity of approaching a money-lender,” said the old fellow, trembling in his shoes at the amount for which he was asking. “But——”
Toto stopped under the lamp at the corner of the Rue de Courcelles where it cuts the Boulevard Haussmann. He took a note-case from his pocket.
“Here’s a note for a thousand. You can let me have it some time. I haven’t anything smaller.”
“A million million thanks!” cried De Nani, grabbing the note and gritting his false teeth to think that he might have asked for two thousand and obtained it just as easily—“a million thanks! Why, my dear boy, what a doleful yawn! One might fancy you bored.”
“I am, to death.”
“May I make you a little prescription?” inquired the old man, in whom the prospect of the coming dinner operated like an elixir of youth.
“A prescription for ennui? Yes.”
“Get married.”