"Yes. He had great baggy red trousers and a sash around his waist and a short blue jacket braided with red and a fez with a tassel and a shaven head. He saved me from being run over by a cab."
Emmy shivered. "Oh, don't talk of it in that calm way—suppose you had been killed!"
"I suppose the Zouave would have buried me—he's such a helpful creature, you know. He's been in Algiers. He says I ought to go there. His name is Hégisippe Cruchot."
"But what about the flat?" asked Emmy.
"Oh, you see, I fell down in front of the cab and he dragged me away and brushed me down with a waiter's napkin—there was a café within a yard or two. And then I asked him to have a drink and gave him a cigarette. He drank absinthe, without water, and then I began to explain to him an idea for an invention which occurred to me to prevent people from being run over by cabs, and he was quite interested. I'll show you—"
"You won't," said Emmy, with a laugh. She had her lighter moments. "You'll do no such thing—not until you've told me about the flat."
"Oh! the flat," said Septimus in a disappointed tone, as if it were a secondary matter altogether. "I gave him another absinthe and we became so friendly that I told him that I wanted a flat and didn't in the least know how to set about finding one. It turned out that there was an appartement vacant in the house of which his mother is concierge. He took me along to see it, and introduced me to Madame, his mother. He has also got an aunt who can cook."
"I should like to have seen you talking to the Zouave," said Emmy. "It would have made a pretty picture—the two of you hobnobbing over a little marble table."
"It was iron, painted yellow," said Septimus. "It wasn't a resplendent café."
"I wonder what he thought of you."