"Will you sell him for ten?"
The boy gasped. Ten sous! He had never in his ragged existence owned ten sous.
"Quick," said Jean-Paul, rattling the money before his eyes.
To be master of ten sous, and to have at the same time a gingerbread fair at his very side was too great a stroke of fortune for the little peasant to grasp. "I should think so!" he said.
"There, then." Jean-Paul crowded the pennies into the boy's hand, leaned forward, and picked up the little rabbit by the ears, and lifted it over the heads of the group.
"See here!" exclaimed Pierre, angrily, "you are a little too fresh, my fine fellow!" and he sprang to his feet and confronted Jean-Paul.
"It is my rabbit, Pierre Fouget," replied the other, whose eyes, though calm, were dangerous. "I have just bought him for ten sous."
"Yes," nodded his former owner, "that is so; and give me my sou for the sport, Pierre."
Pierre measured the straight figure of Jean-Paul. He looked at his broad chest, and at the big hand that held the panting beast tenderly. Jean-Paul stood quite still and looked back at him. Then Pierre laughed sneeringly, and shrugging his shoulders, "My word, if the monsieur has a fancy to collect animals, and can pay for them, it is his own affair," he said, and turned away.
The little boy of the ten sous, his hands full of cakes, was swinging in the merry-go-round. He waved his hand to Jean-Paul as he passed. "I shall ride twice more, Jean-Paul," he said.