So in ten minutes’ time I said good-bye to him and was hurrying home with the money in my pocket. The sun was shining, the sky a dome of lapis lazuli, the Seine affable as ever. Once again it was the dear Paris I loved, the city of life and light. In a perfect effervescence of joy I bounded upstairs to the garret. Then quite suddenly and successfully I concealed my elation.
“Hullo, Little Thing!” I sighed. “What have you got for dinner? It’s foolish how I am hungry.”
“I have do the best I can, darleen,” Anastasia said sadly. “There was not much of money—only forty-five centimes. See, I have buy sausage and salad and some bread. That leave for supper to-night four sous. Go on. Eat, darleen. I don’t want anything.”
I looked at the glossy red saucissson-a-la-mulet, the stringy head of chicory, the stale bread. After all, spread out there and backed by a steaming jug of coffee, it didn’t look such a bad repast. I kissed her for the pains she had taken.
“Hold up your apron,” I said sadly.
Wonderingly she obeyed. Then I threw into it one by one ten crisp pink bank-notes, each for one hundred francs. I thought her eyes would drop out, they were so wide.
“Eight—nine—ten hundred. There, I guess we can afford to go out to déjeûner to-day. What do you say to our old friend, the café Soufflet?”
“It is not true, this money? You are not doing this for laughing?”
“You bet your life. It’s real money. There’s more of it coming up, fifteen more of these billets deux. So come on to the café, Little Thing, and I’ll tell you all the good tidings.”
Seated in the restaurant, I was in the dizziest heights of rapture, and bubbling over with plans. Such a dramatic plunge into prosperity dazzled me.