back till he looked round again.

"Monsieur," she said then; "will you just let me slip in front
of you? I am so little; I shan't stop your seeing."

She had a nice voice. The poise of her head, lifted and thrown
back on a plump neck, showed a pair of bright eyes and good teeth
between pouting lips. She glided, merry and alert, into the place
Jean made for her without a word.

The man with the guitar sang a ballad about caged birds and blossoms
in flower-pots.

"_Mine_," observed the work-girl to Jean, "are carnations, and
I have birds too--canaries they are."

At the moment he was thinking of some fair-faced châtelaine roaming
under the battlements of a donjon.

The work-girl went on:

"I have a pair,--you understand, to keep each other company. Two
is a nice number, don't you think so?"

He marched off with his visions under the old trees of the Avenue.
After a turn or two up and down, he espied the little work-girl
hanging on the arm of a handsome young fellow, fashionably dressed,
wearing a heavy gold watch-chain. Her admirer was catching her
by the waist in the dusk of the trees, and she was laughing.