“Still I should be very wishful ...”
“Nothing doing!”
“Not even if I paid?”
The innkeeper looked wonderingly at the man, surprised at such persistency.
“What d’you mean by that?”
“Look here,” the would-be waiter explained, “I’m very anxious to wait at table, to wait at this table, it’s a business I’m keen on. If you’d let me have the tips for myself, I’ll pay you twenty francs to make it up to you.”
The landlord of The Orange Blossom hesitated. The man’s offer was a good one for him, too good indeed; that was more or less what made him suspicious, for neither of the two could fail to know that the tips would never in the long run reach any such amount. To tell the truth, it was this very fact that inclined the innkeeper to look upon the unknown’s application in a favourable light. But he was still suspicious. Perhaps the fine fellow had some cute idea at the back of his head, or perhaps he wanted to kick up a disturbance. Was he a rejected lover, the bride’s fancy man, or possibly the brother or kinsman of a former mistress discarded by the bridegroom? One never knows, such queer things happen! Once more the innkeeper looked hard at this fellow who was so monstrously eager to take service with him; he saw the man was calm and composed enough and had not a bad face of his own.
“Look here,” the landlord of The Orange Blossom began again, “you’re not humbugging me? you want to pay a louis to wait at table, and you don’t mean to play any tricks?”
The unknown laughed frankly in the other’s face:
“Why, not a bit of it, sir, that I swear; I tell you, it amuses me to wait on these people, it’s as you might say, it’s ... it’s a wager I made with my pals.”