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.