“So she takes your eye, does she?”
“To be sure, she would if she was free; but you understand I can’t think of——”
“Well, listen to me; the very greatest service you could do us would be to rob us of that beauty.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“No; this is how it is: my master is a reckless fellow; he is travelling to learn how to be prudent, and you can understand that the way to do that isn’t to travel with a little woman who, as you say, works her eyes so well that she makes him long for her. But I must have common sense for him: now the best thing that I can see to do is to separate him from this highway heroine, who, I am sure, pretends to be devoted to him only because she thinks he’s rich.”
“So she didn’t come from Paris with you?”
“Oh, no! it was a fine chance encounter we had in the Lyon diligence. It would have done a hundred times better to upset us than to contain that princess! But you, who are always on the road—she won’t be in your way in your wagon; besides, I fancied that I saw you looking her over like a connoisseur.”
“I don’t say no; but how do you expect——”
“You’re a fine man, an attractive-looking fellow!”
“I certainly am not very ill-looking,” said the tradesman, complacently viewing himself in a fragment of looking-glass on the chimney-piece.