ld sit,
either in the shop or in the little room at the back, her blue childish
eyes fixed on him wistfully. At first he tried to lure her into the gay
street; but walking tired her. He encouraged her to sit outside on the
pavement of the Rue Saint-Honore and join with Mme. Bidoux in the gossip
of neighbours; but she listened to them with uncomprehending ears. In
despair Aristide, to coax a smile from her lips, practised his many
queer accomplishments. He conjured with cards; he juggled with oranges;
he had a mountebank's trick of putting one leg round his neck; he
imitated the voices of cats and pigs and ducks, till Mme. Bidoux held
her sides with mirth. He spent time and thought in elaborating what he
called _bonnes farces_, such as dressing himself up in Mme. Bidoux's
raiment and personifying a crabbed customer.

Fleurette smiled but listlessly at all these comicalities.

One day she was taken ill. A doctor, summoned, said many learned words
which Aristide and Mme. Bidoux tried hard to understand.

"But, after all, what is the matter with her?"

[Illustration: ARISTIDE PRACTISED HIS MANY QUEER ACCOMPLISHMENTS]

"She has no strength to struggle. She wants happiness."

"Can you tell me the druggist's where that can be procured?" asked
Aristide.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "I tell you the truth. It is one of
those pulmonary cases. Happy, she will live; unhappy, she will die."

"My poor Mme. Bidoux, what is to be done?" asked Aristide, after the
doctor had gone off with his modest fee. "How are we to make her happy?"

"If only she could have news of her husband!" replied Mme. Bidoux.

Aristide's anxieties grew heavier. It was November, when knickerbockered
and culture-seeking tourists no longer fill the cheap hotels of Paris.
The profits of the Agence Pujol dwindled. Aristide lived on bread and
cheese, and foresaw the time when cheese would be a sinful luxury.
Meanwhile Fleurette had her nourishing food, and grew more like the
ghost of a lily every day. But her eyes followed Aristide, wherever he
went in her presence, as if he were the god of her salvation.

One day Aristide, with an unexpected franc or two in his pocket,
stopped in front of a _bureau de tabac_. A brown packet of caporal and
a book of cigarette-papers--a cigarette rolled--how good it would be!
He hesitated, and his glance fell on a collection of foreign stamps
exposed in the window. Among them were twelve Honduras stamps all
postmark