"To-morrow morning, my dear lady, in my office, I shall be entirely at your service."
"No, no! Now! Come to her; tell her yourself!"
"In my office, to-morrow—"
"No! now!" And they walked away together, she victorious, as usual.
"Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ho! ho! ho! ho!"
"Hear that old 'Jean qui rit' still laughing over his Madame Récamier story."
"No! no! Ho! ho!" The old gentleman's extended mouth cut a semicircle in his soft, round, beardless face. "Ho! ho! ho! ho! That Providence! What a farceur, my friends! For a jeu d'esprit there is no one like him. To the sans-culotte father he sends a pantalooned daughter,—ha! ha! ha!"
When the arrivals entirely ceased, the lookers-on upstairs, the back-door guests, had to advance their positions to be at all repaid for the trouble of peeping. Like shadows they crept out on tiptoe from their hiding-places to hang over the banisters and look down on the exalted, God-favored world below, their eager eyes catching the light and shining strangely
