Again I felt my coat tails being tugged. “Who is it this time?” I thought. It was not my favorite manner of being greeted, I decided, there and then.
Cautiously I turned. Again it was “Madame.”
“What’s the trouble?” she asked, now all solicitude. “Why are you hiding in a corner? You don’t look well. Shouldn’t you see a doctor?”
“I don’t need a doctor.”
“Surely, something is wrong with you. You look pale, and it’s not the very least bit like you to be off sulking in a corner. What’s the trouble?”
“The insult to you,” I said.
I remembered what Hughes had said, when “Madame” replied: “Insult? Insult?... What insult? Did you insult me?... What on earth are you talking about?”
There was no point, I felt, in reminding her of the incident.
“When you want to speak to me,” I said, “must you pull my coat off my back?”
“The next time I shall do it harder,” she said with her very individual little laugh. “Don’t you think we have been here long enough?... Come along now, take us home.”