“But you will want it.”
“No, I shan’t. You want it more than I do. Besides,” continued the Prince, “I have not a lark to keep up.”
They divided, squabbling over an odd sou, and when the accounts were settled they walked on.
“How good you are!” said Célestin, almost in tears at the manifold bounties God was heaping upon her this fine April morning. “I will put it in the money-box for Dodor. Oh, dear! why did I think of dying just then? It must have been the thought of Dodor. I often lie awake and think what would become of him if I died. I have a money-box for him to give to someone to be kind to him in case I got ill and died. The five-franc piece is in it, and other money as well. I will put yours, too. See, this is where I live.”
They had reached a gloomy street sprinkled with a few shops, and filled with the boom of an adjacent factory. A gloomy house of four stories was the house where Célestin lived.
“Now I shall know where to find you in case you fail to meet me to-morrow,” said Toto, as they shook hands.
“I will not fail,” she replied. “I have never broken a promise in my life—only once.”
“When was that?”
“This morning, when I promised Dodor to be back in half an hour.”
Then he kissed her hand just as the old gentleman with the red rosette had done, and wandered away, his head filled with thoughts of her. For it was a peculiarity of Célestin’s that, whilst she must have appealed to the angels in heaven, she also appealed strongly to Porte St. Martin minds.