Max by Katherine Cecil Thurston
page 39 of 365 (10%)
page 39 of 365 (10%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
On the opening of the door the waiter glanced round in strained anticipation, and the lady of the stew looked up and bowed a greeting to the new-comer. It struck the boy as curious--this welcome from a total stranger, but it woke anew the pleasant warmth, the agreeable sense of friendliness. With the tingling sensation of doing a daring deed, he glanced round the empty room, scanned the two long windows on which the cold, bright sun played laughingly, and through which the rattle and hum of the rue de Dunkerque penetrated like an exhilarating accompaniment, then, he walked straight to the table of the lady, smiled and, in his own turn, bowed. 'Would madame permit him to sit at her table? It was sad to be alone upon so fine a morning.' A woman of any other nationality might have looked at him askance; but madame was French. She was fifty years of age, she was fat, she was ugly--but she was French. The sense of a pleasant encounter--the appreciation of romance was in her blood. She smiled at the debonair boy with as agreeable a self-consciousness as though she had been a young girl. 'But certainly, if monsieur desired. The pleasure was for her.' Again an interchange of bows and smiles, sympathetically repeated by the interested young waiter. Then the boy, laying his hat and coat aside, seated himself at the table and entered upon the business of the hour, while madame became tactfully absorbed in her odoriferous stew. |
|