generally enough for most of our customers, but he, before he left,
contrived to put away three; also contriving, during the same short space
of time, to inform 'Mam'sel Marie' that Paris, since he had looked into
her eyes, had become the only town worth living in, so far as he was
concerned, throughout the whole universe. He had his failings, had
Master Tom Sleight, but shyness wasn't one of them. She gave him a smile
when he left that would have brought a less impressionable young man than
he back again to that Cafe; but for the rest of the day I noticed
'Mam'sel Marie' frowned to herself a good deal, and was quite unusually
cynical in her view of things in general.

"Next afternoon he found his way to us again, and much the same sort of
thing went on, only a little more of it. A sailor-man, so I am told,
makes love with his hour of departure always before his mind, and so gets
into the habit of not wasting time. He gave her short lessons in
English, for which she appeared to be grateful, and she at his request
taught him the French for 'You are just charming! I love you!' with
which, so he explained, it was his intention, on his return to England,
to surprise his mother. He turned up again after dinner, and the next
day before lunch, when after that I looked up and missed him at his usual
table, the feeling would come to me that business was going down. Marie
always appeared delighted to see him, and pouted when he left; but what
puzzled me at the time was, that though she fooled him to the top of his
bent, she flirted every bit as much, if not more, with her other
customers--leastways with the nicer ones among them. There was one young
Frenchman in particular--a good-looking chap, a Monsieur Flammard, son of
the painter. Up till then he'd been making love pretty steadily to Miss
Marie, as, indeed, had most of 'em, without ever getting much forrarder;
for hitherto a chat about the weather, and a smile that might have meant
she was in love with you or might have meant she was laughing at you--no
man could ever tell which,--was all the most persistent had got out of
her. Now, however, and evidently to his own surprise, young Monsieur
Flammard found himself in clover. Provided his English rival happened to
be present and not too far removed, he could have as much flirtation as
he wanted, which, you may take it, worked out at a very tolerable amount.
Master Tom could sit and scowl, and for the matter of that di