He was ready to go. “John, hand me my hat.”—“Very good, Sir.”—“My stick.”—“Here it is, sir!”
“John, I shall not be back perhaps till late at night—perhaps not at all; no need to sit up for me.”
“Very good, sir ... good-night, sir!”
“Good-night, John.”
Seated at the back of the omnibus office in the Place de la Bastille, two persons were conversing in low voices; they were Père Moche, wearing, as always, his everlasting top hat with the mangy nap and draped solemnly in his long frock-coat, and little Nini Guinon, modestly clad in a navy blue skirt barely reaching to the ankles and a straw hat trimmed with wild flowers. To look at the pair you would have taken them for people of the small shop-keeper class—the father a worthy business employé, the daughter a school-girl, hardly out of the Convent. No one would ever have dreamt he had before him the old usurer of the Rue Saint-Fargeau, comrade and accomplice of the worst apaches of the district, and least of all that the modest maiden he saw there was a vulgar street-walker, a common murderer’s mistress, seduced and ruined long ago, for all her tender years.
Père Moche was grumbling sourly:
“The thing’s disgusting. Since they did away with the correspondance tickets, the omnibus offices are getting fewer and fewer and less and less used. I had the devil’s own job to find just this one here to arrange to meet you at.”
“But why,” demanded Nini, teasing the old man, “why couldn’t you let me join you at the pub on the corner there? We could have swigged a half-pint or so then in the mug’s honour.”
M. Moche started, and putting on a grieved look, began to scold the too outspoken Nini—albeit he felt a strong inclination to laugh all the while.
“You slut, will you never be serious? You spend your time humbugging, trying to frighten me, you do. I’m all the while in a stew you’ll let out a big ’un before him ...”