“He’ll show up,” he said.
“I hope he never does!” she replied.
The Swiss was disturbed.
“How did you meet Quentin? Through the fracas he started here?”
“Yes. They told me that there had been a dispute between a young chap and a vile man who had insulted me. I asked Cornejo, the fellow who writes topical songs for the musical comedies, who my defender was, and he said: ‘I’ll show him to you.’ Every night I asked him: ‘Who is he? Who is he?’—but he never showed up. After awhile I got impatient and said to Cornejo: ‘Look here; you tell your friend that I want to meet him, that if he doesn’t come to the theatre, to go to my house, and that I live near here in a boarding house called Mariquita’s House.’ Would you believe it? There I was, waiting day after day, and he never showed up!”
“You must have been indignant,” said Springer.
“Naturally! I said: ‘If he doesn’t know me, why did he defend me? And if he does know me, why doesn’t he come to see me?’”
“How did you get to meet him finally?”
“You’ll see; one day Cornejo came in here with Quentin, and introduced him to me as the man who had insulted me and had been struck by my defender. I said a lot of outrageous and insulting things to him, and just then a friend of his came in and greeted him with a ‘Hello, Quentin!’ Then I realized that he was my defender and we made friends.”
“Yes, he’s very fond of those farces.”