and no sooner was I in the place than I saw Michel Grey, the brother of the little American woman Sir Nicolas had just driven to St. Cloud. He was sit- ting at a table, and there was a bottle of hock before him.
"Halloa, my man!" cried he, as I passed him, and he didn't speak a bit like an American; "I'd like half a dozen words with you, if you don't mind."
"With the greatest pleasure in life, sir," I replied, thinking, at the same time, what a peculiar looking gentleman he was.
"Is it long since you left Dublin?" asks he, quite calm like, and pretending to see nothing of the start I gave.
"Would that be any business of yours?" I said, sharp and short, and looking at him in a way he couldn't mistake.
"Certainly it would be," says he. "A cousin of mine knew a Sir Nicolas Steele in Dublin three years ago, and I was wondering if it was the same."
"Then you should have asked my guv'nor," says I, while my heart began to jump so that I could hardly hold my hand still.
"Oh, no offence!" cries he, and with that he slipped a five-franc piece into my hand.
"You've been in Paris long?" he asks.
"A month or more," says I, thinking where I could have him.
"Are you going back to England soon?"
"We are going back at the end of November.
