Et le bébé,
Chaforé?
C’reti’n,—
Baptisé
A main pleine
D’eau de Seine,
This atrocious doggerel, with its false rhymes and impossible quantities, its bad puns and equivocal suggestions, we sang straight through, at the tops of our voices; and Mademoiselle Miss listened smiling. How were we to know that she hadn’t the faintest inkling of what it was all about, and that her smile betokened nothing deeper than pleasure in our high spirits and amusement at our vociferous energy? By and by she rose from the table, wished us a polite good-evening, and left the room.
I think it was on the next night that we made up a party to go to Bruant’s, in the Boulevard Rochechouart; and Zélie, moved by an impulse of kindness, turned to Miss, and proposed that she should join us. Miss asked what Bruant’s was; and Zélie answered vaguely, “Comment, tu ne sais pas? Tant mieux, alors. Tu vas voir.” And Miss retired to put on her bonnet.
Thank goodness, if her acquaintance with French was slight, her acquaintance with the jargon talked and chanted at the Cabaret du Mirliton was null. Otherwise, she must always have remembered her visit there with pain and humiliation, and she could never have forgiven us for allowing her to make one of our expedition. As a matter of fact, however, she is able to recall the occasion as that of a singularly jolly little adventure, and is entirely unaware of the blame that we deserved.
At the outcry of