The time passes quickly when one is in pleasant company. I suddenly discovered that it was long past five o’clock; and my wife would be expecting me to dinner, and I was to take her that evening to see a new play! I bade my young friends good-bye. I promised to go again to see them and I urged Ernest to come upstairs when he passed my house.
It rarely happened that I was not at home some time before the dinner hour; and that day we were to dine before five o’clock, in order to have plenty of time to go to the theatre. I found Eugénie at the window, anxious and impatient.
“Where on earth have you been? It is almost half-past five; you never come home so late.”
“My dear love, I met a friend,—one of my old friends.”
“Should a man’s friends cause him to forget his wife?”
“I didn’t think about the time.”
“And you didn’t think of me, who have been waiting for you and who did not know what to think.”
“Nonsense! come to dinner.”
“But tell me, where have you been?”
“I will tell you at the table.”