“Very fine folks!”
“I fancy that you haven’t known them long?”
“No, they’ve only been here about two months.”
“And you know already that they are fine folks?”
“Oh! that’s the way folks talk, you know. When a person spends a lot of money and pays, we say: ‘They’re fine folks.’”
“And when they are poor creatures who live on little or nothing and undergo innumerable privations, you don’t say that of them, eh?”
“Ha! ha! what you say’s true all the same, monsieur.”
“Do you belong here?”
“Yes, monsieur; florist and gardener by trade; Père Ledrux. Everybody knows me!”
“And I’ll wager that you know everybody?”