The sarcasm escaped her.

She was wondering to herself whether it would be vain and wicked to pray
for a pair of stockings: she thought she would go and ask Father Francis.

By this time they were in the Rue Royale, and half-way down it. The
lamps were lighted. A regiment was marching up it with a band playing.
The windows were open, and people were laughing and singing in some of
them. The light caught the white and gilded fronts of the houses. The
pleasure-seeking crowds loitered along in the warmth of the evening.

Bébée, suddenly roused from her thoughts by the loud challenge of the
military music, looked round on the stranger, and motioned him back.

"Sir,--I do not know you,--why should you come with me? Do not do it,
please. You make me talk, and that makes me late."

And she pushed her basket farther on her arm, and nodded to him and ran
off--as fleetly as a hare through fern--among the press of the people.

"To-morrow, little one," he answered her with a careless smile, and let
her go unpursued. Above, from the open casement of a café, some young men
and some painted women leaned out, and threw sweetmeats at him, as in
carnival time.

"A new model,--that pretty peasant?" they asked him.

He laughed in answer, and went up the steps to join them; he dropped the
moss-roses as he went, and trod on them, and did not wait.