“That’s up to you. I’m getting mighty low in funds, so let’s do it cheap but do it a plenty,” and Jim looked rather ruefully at his few remaining francs.
“I am still in funds but I shall have to go it mighty easy, too, to get Judy and me home. I tell you what we might do. Let’s go to a shop where they have ready cooked food and bring it out here and eat it. They say you can live on half what it costs to eat in a restaurant. When I was studying over here I knew lots of fellows who lived that way. Of course, they had studios where they could take the stuff and eat it, but the Luxembourg Garden is good enough. I know a place where the Perkinses used to deal. They are the funny lot I told you about, the long-haired man and the short-haired woman. He is driving an ambulance now and goodness knows where she is.”
“Well, let’s go to it. I am so hungry I can hardly waddle. These Continental breakfasts with nothing but bread and coffee don’t fill me up half way.”
Kent smiled, remembering the two full orders and the four eggs his friend had tucked away, but he said nothing. Having a good appetite of his own, he had naught but sympathy for his famished friend.
They left the garden and made for the shop where Jo and Polly Perkins had bought their ready cooked provisions.
“These people make some little pies that are mighty good, too. We might get half a dozen or so of them as a top off,” suggested Kent.
“Fine! I’ve got a mouth for pie, all right.”
Judy had gone to the kitchen for a moment to bring to the fore the smoked tongue that Père Tricot had been slicing in those paper-thin slices that he alone knew how to accomplish. She bore aloft a great platter of the viand, the even slices arranged like a wreath of autumn leaves. While she was still in the living room behind the shop, two strangers entered. Their backs being to the light, Judy only saw their silhouettes as they bent over the show cases eagerly discussing what selection of meats and vegetables they should make, while Mère Tricot, accustomed to slim-pocketed customers, patiently waited. Suddenly she leaned over the counter and touched something which one of the young men had thrown over his arm.
“What is this?” she demanded with the manner she could so well assume, that of a woman of the Commune who meant to right her wrongs.
The purchaser of sauce and potato salad, the two cheapest and most filling of the wares, held up rather sheepishly a blue serge suit.