This bread and coffee, and a pear which they should
eat at noon, would give them strength to labor till nightfall brought
its frugal repast. Yet they were happy as crickets, and a great deal
more noisy.
Here is little Suzette, smiling and skipping, and driving her glances
straight into Ralph Flare's heart.
"Good-day, sir," she cries, and takes a chair close by him, after the
manner of a sparrow alighting. She smooths back her pure wristbands,
disclosing the grace of the arm, and as she laughs in Ralph's face he
knows what she is saying to herself; it is more doubtful that he loves
her than that she knows it.
"_Peut-etre, monsieur, vous-avez besoin des gants?_"
She gave him the card of her _boutique_, and laughed like a sunbeam
playing on a rivulet, and went out singing like the witch that she was.
"I don't want gloves," said Ralph Flare; "I won't go to her shop."
But he asked Pere George the direction, notwithstanding; and though his
conscience seemed to be blocking up the way--a tangible, visible,
provoking conscience--he put his feet upon it and shut his lips, and
found the place.
Ralph Flare has often remarked since--for he is quite an artist
now--that of all scenes in art or nature that _boutique_ was to him the
rarest.
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