Suddenly Wilkins looked up, and remarked:-
"I have an engagement for you to-night, Guly."
"For me! what is it, pray?"
"Guess."
"Oh, I never can. You must tell me, if you ever expect me to know."
"What would you say, if I told you 'twas a visit to Blanche?"
"Can it be possible?"
Guly blushed very deeply, which Wilkins observed, and commented upon with mischievous delight.
"Did the invitation come from her own lips, Wilkins?"
"To be sure it did."
"And you accepted in my name?"
"Certainly."
"Thank you! I shall be delighted."
"At eight o'clock, then."
"Very well."
And so they parted, and Guly was left alone at the little table.
It was an hour when the restaurant was pretty well filled, and the numerous inmates busily discussed the news, foreign and political, and affairs private and public, in their various languages and different manners. Guly looked round from his solitary table, an amused spectator of the scene. But suddenly his attention was attracted by a sound of shuffling steps upon the floor, and turning, he beheld his friend the dwarf, making his way in between the tables, with a dexterity which his long canes would scarcely warrant.
Though surprised at the presence of one so poor in such a place, Guly advanced, and placed a chair for him at a table near his own, and helped him to mount upon it.
"Hih, hih! Monsieur; you are very good," puffed the little man, quite out of breath, without looking up at his kind assistant. "Give me a little bean soup, if you please, Monsieur. I am very poor, and very hungry to-day. Must spend one picayune for one cheap dinner, or else must have one cheap coffin made for me at the expense of the corporation! Hih, hih!"
Guly smiled at this odd speech, and rang the little bell for the waiter. As he did so, the dwarf suddenly wheeled his head round on his slender neck, and tipped his one eye curiously up at the face beside him.
"'Tis you, Monsieur. Be gor, I thought it was one waiter. Hih, hih! I am very hungry, Monsieur."
"Here is the waiter. What will you have, my friend?"
"One cheap dinner-bean soup-I am so very poor. Ah, Monsieur, 'tis hard to be so poor."
Guly ordered some meat to be added to the old man's frugal repast, and then returned to his own table to finish his dinner. The dwarf seemed to dispatch his meal with a fine relish, though interrupting himself in the process of eating, every few minutes, by twisting his crooked body half-way round, and turning his one eye up at Guly, as if to make sure he was there.
The singular appearance of the dwarf, and the ready and gentle assistance rendered him by Guly, had attracted considerable attention, from those who yet lingered over their viands; and when Guly took his seat, a young exquisite, who occupied a table just at his left, and who had been obliged to use two of his fingers to part his glossy moustache, while he passed in his food with his other hand, now turned round, and regarded him with an impertinent stare.
"I say, Mistar, is that gentleman with crutches yondaw, a brothaw of yours?"
"By the laws of humanity he is, sir."
"Awr! I'm glad to find there's no closaw tie, so I can express my opinion of him. He is a scamp, sah!"
"Indeed! why so?"
"Because he is, sah!"
"You know him?"
"Perfectly well!"
"And he is a scamp?"
"If he's no relation of yours, yes, sah."
"Does he tipple?"
"Not zat I know, sah!"
"Steal?"
"No, sah!"
"Meddle with other people's affairs?"
"Yes, sah! zat is, every day he puts his disgwusting digits on my spotless cassimeres, and asks for money!"
"You of course grant his request?"
"Not I, sah! I feel always like touching the twip of me pwatent leather gaitaw just beneath the lowermost extreme of his spinal column, and elevating his dangling supporters a few feet in the air, before pwopelling him into the nearest guttaw."
"A very unpleasant feeling, most certainly."
"Vewy true, sah!"
"Yes, sah, especially when you know your stwaps are too tight to admit of any such use of your unmentionable members," squeaked the dwarf, mockingly, who had sat unmoved within hearing distance of the whole conversation.
A roar of laughter followed this speech, through which the dandy sat frowning darkly. When it ceased, he sprang near the dwarf, shouting:
"You mean to insult me, do you, eh?"
"Hope you wouldn't notice such a scamp as me, sah!" squeaked the dwarf in answer.
"I will pwummel your cwooked legs, sah!"
"Wipe that off of your own, sah, first," cried the other, dexterously turning a fresh plate of bean soup over the dandy's "spwotless cassimeres."
Another roar of laughter followed this act, amid which the exquisite made his exit with his pocket hankerchief spread over his lap, swearing he would "go stwaight and sue for dwamages," that he was "scalded to death by the dem beggar, and he would have revenge for his ruined trousers, be gar!"
Guly, after assisting his helpless friend to his crutches and a firm standing, was about to leave; but the dwarf detained him by twitching the skirt of his coat, then exclaimed:
"Hih, hih! monsieur, I lost my bean soup but I saved my head, hih! hih! bean, soup's good, but 'twas spilt in a glorious cause; paid for monsieur?"
This last question was put in such a comic manner, with that one eye tipped up towards him, that Guly could not repress a smile; but he cordially satisfied him on that point, feeling still able, in spite of his diminished salary, to pay for a beggar's dinner, which is more than many, with their well filled purses, can make themselves afford to do.
Freeing himself from the companionship of his singular friend, Guly hurried away to the store; with every light footfall, and each thrilling heart-throb, whispering to himself one word, which fell upon his thoughts in the midst of the crowd and din through which he hastened, like the tinkling music of a waterfall in the midst of a broad desert, "Blanche! Blanche!"
CHAPTER XXIII.
At eight o'clock precisely, Wilkins stepped down from his desk, gave orders to have the store closed, and told Guly he would be ready in one moment. The clerks, most of them, dropped the curtain of linen over the goods, and went out, not sleeping in the store and having no pass key. While Jeff was putting up the shutters, Guly went to Arthur and told him he was going out to see one of Wilkins' friends a little while, but would be back soon, and begged him to go to bed and try to sleep that haggard look from his face.
"Yes," Arthur said, he had no doubt but he needed rest and would try to gain it; and shaking hands they parted. Wilkins seemed waiting for the two or three clerks who yet remained, to go away before he left, but as he stood drawing on his gloves, Quirk came up and whispered something in his ear which Guly did not hear, but to which Wilkins answered aloud, saying: "I can't leave the key with you, but I'll lock you in."
"And how long will you be gone?"
"Only an hour or two."
"All right, then."
Wilkins and Guly went out and locked the door, leaving the young men in there. They walked on, through the busy streets thronged with pleasure seekers, some on foot, some riding, all gaily dressed and full apparently of bright anticipations and buoyant life. Sometimes a lamp gleam would fall through the plate-glass windows of some princely structure, where light forms of beauty, attired in fashion's garb, were flitting through the mazy dance or listening to music's enrapturing strain. As Guly walked on, noting the panorama of life which passed by him, he fell into a fit of musing from which he was unable to rouse himself, until they turned into another street, and Wilkins remarked quietly that it was the one in which Blanche lived. Then his whole attention was awakened, and there was no more musing, no more lack of conversation till they paused to rap at the door of the little house where Blanche lived. She opened it herself, and held out a hand to each of the new comers.