"Place des Victoires! All aboard for Place des Victoires!"
"Tell me about getting my cake!"
"Yes, monsieur; yes, yes, go to the pastry-cook's!"
And the clerk turns to his comrade, muttering:
"What a nuisance the fellow is with his cake!—Where should we be if everybody asked questions like that?"
A woman, of forty years or thereabout, who could not easily have found a compartment large enough to hold her, entered the office, leading two small boys, one of eight and one of four years, who were dressed like the little trained dogs that do tricks on the boulevards, and whose noses had evidently been overlooked because of their hurried departure from home.
A servant, laden with an enormous basket, from which protruded divers fishes' tails and bunches of leeks, and with an insecurely tied pasteboard box, bulging as to the sides and split in several places, sulkily followed her mistress, hitting everybody with her basket and box, without a word of apology, but apparently rather inclined to make wry faces at her victims.
"I want two seats for Romainville, monsieur—for me and my maid; my boys don't pay, because we hold them in our laps."
"Madame, this boy is certainly more than five; he must pay."
"But, monsieur, I tell you, I hold him in my lap; so we only fill one seat."