"Very well."
And so they parted, and Guly was left alone at the little table.
It was an hour when the restaurant was pretty well filled, and the numerous inmates busily discussed the news, foreign and political, and affairs private and public, in their various languages and different manners. Guly looked round from his solitary table, an amused spectator of the scene. But suddenly his attention was attracted by a sound of shuffling steps upon the floor, and turning, he beheld his friend the dwarf, making his way in between the tables, with a dexterity which his long canes would scarcely warrant.
Though surprised at the presence of one so poor in such a place, Guly advanced, and placed a chair for him at a table near his own, and helped him to mount upon it.
"Hih, hih! Monsieur; you are very good," puffed the
little man, quite out of breath, without looking up at his kind assistant. "Give me a little bean soup, if you please, Monsieur. I am very poor, and very hungry to-day. Must spend one picayune for one cheap dinner, or else must have one cheap coffin made for me at the expense of the corporation! Hih, hih!"
Guly smiled at this odd speech, and rang the little bell for the waiter. As he did so, the dwarf suddenly wheeled his head round on his slender neck, and tipped his one eye curiously up at the face beside him.
"'Tis you, Monsieur. Be gor, I thought it was one waiter. Hih, hih! I am very hungry, Monsieur."
"Here is the waiter. What will you have, my friend?"
"One cheap dinner—bean soup—I am so very poor. Ah, Monsieur, 'tis hard to be so poor."