playing rounders--_la balle au camp_--from which I concluded it was a
Thursday afternoon, a half-holiday; if they had had clean shirts on
(which they had not) it would have been Sunday, and the holiday a
whole one.

I knew them all, and the two _pions_, or ushers, M. Lartigue and _le
petit Cazal_; but no longer cared for them or found them amusing or
interesting in the least.

Opposite the Ranelagh a few old hackney-coach men were pacifically
killing time by a game of _bouchon_--knocking sous off a cork with other
sous--great fat sous and double sous long gone out of fashion. It is a
very good game, and I watched it for a while and envied the
long-dead players.

Close by was a small wooden shed, or _baraque_, prettily painted and
glazed, and ornamented at the top with little tricolor flags; it
belonged to a couple of old ladies, Mere Manette and Grandmere
Manette-the two oldest women ever seen. They were very keen about
business, and would not give credit for a centime--not even to English
boys. They were said to be immensely rich and quite alone in the world.
How very dead they must be now! I thought. And I gazed at them and
wondered at their liveliness and the pleasure they took in living. They
sold many things: nougat, _pain d'epices_, mirlitons, hoops, drums,
noisy battledoors and shuttlecocks; and little ten-sou hand-mirrors,
neatly bound in zinc, that could open and shut.

I looked at myself in one of these that was hanging outside; I was old
and worn and gray-my face badly shaven--my hair almost white. I had
never been old in a dream before.