“It is your own fault, you take too long to decide. You can present your father with a Savoy cake with his monogram, that will be just as respectful. Come, come!—Follow us, messenger.”
And this time, without listening to the remonstrances of her son, who declared that a cake did not express his meaning, the stout lady took his arm and dragged him away, but not until the little fellow had darted a random glance in Violette’s direction. In a few moments the Glumeau family had disappeared.
Thereupon, a young man in a blouse, with a cap on his head, and with a shrewd, clever face and a slender figure which denoted sixteen years at most, although he was past seventeen, began to laugh as he looked at the pretty flower girl, beside whom he had stopped, and said to her:
“Well, my word! there’s customers for you! They come here and handle and move your flowers and spoil them, and then go away without buying anything.”
“Dear me, Monsieur Georget, that’s the way it is in business; one can’t always sell.”
“But the young man would have liked to stay, I fancy. What eyes he made at you, zigzag! A man shouldn’t be allowed to squint like that! I am sure it would exempt him from the conscription; for when a man looks all ways at once, he can hardly fire straight at the enemy.—But no matter, you have turned his head.”
“Mon Dieu! to hear you, Georget, one would think that everybody is in love with me!”
“Well, it seems to me that you don’t lack suitors and gallants. There are days when a fellow can’t get near your shop, there are so many people around you!”
“I have no reason to complain, that is true. I sell a great deal. My bouquets seem to please.”
“Oh! your bouquets—and yourself too. When the dealer is good-looking, that makes business good; and deuce take it! you are mighty good-looking.”