"Would m'sieu, who is so good, see a young lady?"
His master smiled as he rose, instinctively at the words "jeune demoiselle," throwing away his cigar.
"Pardon, m'sieu, I thought it might amuse m'sieu—" and Prosper stepped back.
Bulstrode had been intently thinking of the caravansary opposite him, and he now saw that part of the hôtel meublé had come across the street; he recognized it immediately for the smallest part. Before him stood the ridiculous and pathetic figure of a dirty little girl in rags, tatters, and furbelows, her legs clad in red silk stockings evidently intended for fuller, shapelier limbs; her feet slipped about in pattens. She had on a woman's bodice, a long flounced skirt pinned up to keep her from tripping. Her head was adorned by a torn straw hat, also contrived and created for the coquetry of maturity.
"Monsieur is so good," she began in a flute-like voice. "I have come to thank monsieur with all my heart."
Bulstrode looked toward Prosper for enlightenment, but that individual had cleverly disappeared.
"To thank me, my child? But for what?"
"Why, for the eggs and butter and sugar that monsieur was so good as to send me. I have made the cake. It is beautiful! Monsieur le cuisinier of this house baked it for me. It is perhaps a little flat—but that was because I got tired stirring. See—it says—" She had, so he now saw, a book under her arm; letting fall a fold of her cumbersome dress with both hands and opening a filthy cook-book, she laid it on the table, bending over it. "It says stir briskly half an hour." (Her "rs" rolled in her throat like tiny cannons in a rosy hollow.) "Quelle idée! It was too stupid! Half an hour! I just mixed it round once or twice and then—voila! it has white on the top and shall have a candle."
"So you've made a cake?" he said kindly. "I'm sure it's a good one."
She nodded brightly. "It is for that I came to thank monsieur and to ask if he would accept a piece of it."