(and _ma tante_ had a hungry eye) and for _la petite_ Marie's dinner;
and _la petite_ Marie, plump, rosy, and well-liking, looked as if she
might have a capital appetite upon occasion! Should we have as much as
two and a half francs? I doubted it. And then, in the absence of a
miracle, what could we do with two and a half francs, if we had them? A
miserable sum!--convertible, perhaps, into as much bouilli, bread and
cheese, and thin country wine as might have satisfied our own hunger in
a prosaic and commonplace way; but for four persons, two of
them women!...

And this was not the worst of it. I thought I knew Müller well enough by
this time to feel that he would entirely dismiss this minor
consideration of ways and means; that he would order the dinner as
recklessly as if we had twenty francs apiece in our pockets; and that he
would not only order it, but eat it and preside at it with all the
gayety and audacity in life.

Then would come the horrible retribution of the bill!

I felt myself turn red and hot at the mere thought of it.

Then a dastardly idea insinuated itself into my mind. I had my
return-ticket in my waistcoat-pocket:--what if I slipped away presently
to the station and went back to Paris by the next train, leaving my
clever friend to improvise his way out of his own scrape as best
he could?

In the meanwhile, as I was rowing with the stream, we soon got back to
Courbevoie.