which, so he explained, it was his intention, on his return to England,
to surprise his mother. He turned up again after dinner, and the next
day before lunch, when after that I looked up and missed him at his usual
table, the feeling would come to me that business was going down. Marie
always appeared delighted to see him, and pouted when he left; but what
puzzled me at the time was, that though she fooled him to the top of his
bent, she flirted every bit as much, if not more, with her other
customers--leastways with the nicer ones among them. There was one young
Frenchman in particular--a good-looking chap, a Monsieur Flammard, son of
the painter. Up till then he'd been making love pretty steadily to Miss
Marie, as, indeed, had most of 'em, without ever getting much forrarder;
for hitherto a chat about the weather, and a smile that might have meant
she was in love with you or might have meant she was laughing at you--no
man could ever tell which,--was all the most persistent had got out of
her. Now, however, and evidently to his own surprise, young Monsieur
Flammard found himself in clover. Provided his English rival happened to
be present and not too far removed, he could have as much flirtation as
he wanted, which, you may take it, worked out at a very tolerable amount.
Master Tom could sit and scowl, and for the matter of that did; but as
Marie would explain to him, always with the sweetest of smiles, her
business was to be nice to all her customers, and to this, of course, he
had nothing to reply: that he couldn't understand a word of what she and
Flammard talked and laughed about didn't seem to make him any the
happier.

"Well, this sort of thing went on for perhaps a fortnight, and then one
morning over our dejeune, when she and I had the Cafe entirely to
ourselves, I took the opportunity of talking to Mam'sel Marie like a
father.