“Léontine,” said Papa Bouchard, sternly, “I don’t like these flippant interruptions. I did not say—I never meant to say that I proposed to buy a diamond necklace for an old lady, bedridden and eighty years of age. It happened there were spectacles of all kinds made and kept at the same shop—and I went and got a pair of Scotch pebble glasses, at fifty francs——”
“But you said she was stone blind?”
“What if I did? I didn’t say I got the glasses for her. But as I see you won’t let me tell you the story of the necklace, I shall simply keep it to myself. As a matter of fact, they are not diamonds, they are paste.”
Léontine, taking the real stones in her hand, examined them carefully. Then, laying them against the necklace around her own milk-white throat, she remarked: “I see they are. Paste, pure and simple.”
Papa Bouchard could hardly suppress a smile at this, but he did.
“Very well. They are paste, and they cost seventy-five francs. Now, I will make you a proposition. I propose that I shall look into these bills and see what arrangement can be made with Putzki and Louise, and reach some basis of settlement whereby I may be able, by making a series of small payments out of your income, to get rid of them. Meanwhile, I am afraid to trust you with your own necklace—you will always be trying to raise money on it. So I shall hand you over this paste one, which no one but a jeweller can tell from the real one. You will give me the real one—and I will hold it until your bills are paid. Then I will return it to you. I suppose you don’t wish your husband to know of this, and I will agree to keep it from him as long as you keep out of debt. But if you ever transgress in this way again I shall tell him the whole story.”
Léontine listened to this with the utmost gravity, and then replied: “You are a very clever man, Papa Bouchard, but you will find your little Léontine a very clever woman—too clever to put her head in the noose you have so kindly held open for her. I sha’n’t dream of giving up my necklace for anything less than a cheque out of my own money for the payment in full of these bills. I should be willing to take the paste necklace temporarily until the bills are paid. After you have returned it to me I sha’n’t be in the least afraid of your telling Victor, for if you do I shall tell Aunt Céleste all your tales about the bedridden old lady and the trip to St. Germains and the widow——”
“What widow?” asked Papa Bouchard, forgetful for a moment of the lady he had met in the railway carriage two days in succession.
“The prim little widow you went to Verneuil with. My maid happened to be on the same train and saw you helping her out, and heard you say to her you were going to St. Germains to-day—and by the way, I happen to know you did go to St. Germains to-day.”
What a story was this to hatch about the most correct old gentleman in Paris! Papa Bouchard simply glared at Léontine, but that merry young woman was smiling and dimpling, as if debts and duns and trips to Verneuil and diamond necklaces were quite the ordinary ingredients of life. The hen that hatched a cockatrice was no more puzzled and dismayed than was Papa Bouchard at the vagaries of his ward.