fully after his aunt and
incidentally after the _belle dame du troisieme_. He was their only visitor
from the outside world, and as he found a welcome and an ambrosial form of
alcohol compounded of Scotch whiskey and Maraschino (whose subtlety Emmy
had learned from an eminent London actor-manager at a far-away supper
party), he came as often as his respectful ideas of propriety allowed.

They were quaint gatherings, these, in the stiffly furnished little salon:
Emmy, fluffy-haired, sea-shell-cheeked, and softly raimented, lying
indolently on the sofa amid a pile of cushions--she had sent Septimus out
to "La Samaritaine" to buy some (in French furnished rooms they stuff the
cushions with cement), and he had brought back a dozen in a cab, so that
the whole room heaved and swelled with them; Septimus, with his mild blue
eyes and upstanding hair, looking like the conventional picture of one who
sees a ghost; Hegisippe Cruchot, the outrageousness of whose piratical kit
contrasted with his suavity of manner, sitting with military precision on
a straight-backed chair; and Madame Bolivard standing in a far corner of
the room; her bare arms crossed above her blue apron, and watching the
scene with an air of kindly proprietorship. They spoke in French, for only
one word of English had Hegisippe and his aunt between them, and that being
"Howdodogoddam" was the exclusive possession of the former. Emmy gave
utterance now and then to peculiar vocables which she had learned at
school, and which Hegisippe declared to be the purest Parisian he had ever
heard an Englishwoman use, while Septimus spoke very fair French indeed.
Hegisippe would twirl his little brown mustache--he was all brown, skin and
eyes and close-cropped hair, and even the skull under the hair--and tell of
his military service and of the beautiful sunshine of Algiers and, when his
aunt was out of the room, of his Arcadian love affairs. She served in a
wine shop in the Rue des Francs-Bouchers. When was he going to get married?
At Emmy's question he laughed, with a wave of his cigarette, and a clank of
his bayonet against the leg of the chair. On a sou a day? Time enough for
that when he had made his fortune. His mother then would doubtless find him
a suitable wife with a dowry. When his military service was over he was
going to be a waiter. When he volunteered this bit of information Emmy gave
a cry of surprise. This dashing, swaggering desperado of a fellow a waiter!

"I