“Tours! But what were you doing there all this time?… What happened to you?” she asked suspiciously.
“Ah, Countess,” he said solemnly, “it is a long story.” Then, with a deliberate burlesque of portentous gravity, he lowered his voice and whispered hoarsely, “I fell among thieves.”
“What—?” she said in a faltering tone. “What are you saying?… You mean you have come back here… that you have no… how much money have you left?” she demanded sharply.
He thrust his hand into his trousers pocket, fished around and pulled out a few small coins: four two-franc pieces, a franc, two twenty-five-centime coins, a ten— and a five-centime piece—
“That’s all,” he said, counting them over. “Nine francs sixty-five.”
“W-w-w-w-what?” she stammered. “Nine francs sixty-five—do you mean that’s all you have left?”
“That’s all,” he said cheerfully, “but now that I’m here at last it doesn’t matter.”
“Here!” she gasped. “Do you mean you are going—what do you intend to do?” she said sharply.
“Oh,” he said easily, “I shall wait here until I get money from America.”
“And—and how long do you think that will take?” the old woman was twisting her skinny fingers with feverish apprehension.
“Oh, not long,” he said airily. “I wrote my mother yesterday, and it ought not to take over four weeks to get an answer.”
“Four or five weeks!” the old woman said hoarsely. “What are you saying? Four or five weeks, and you have nine francs sixty-five in your pockets! My God! the man is mad!”
“Oh, that part of it will be all right, I guess,” he said with an easy laugh. “I told my mother all about you and Monsieur and Madame Vatel, and all my other friends here, and how good you had been to me, and how you were always befriending Americans, and how they call you Little Mother. I told her you couldn’t have been kinder to me if you’d been my own mother, and that she didn’t need to worry about me at all. So I guess that part of it’s all right,” he concluded comfortably. “I told her that I’d just put up here at the hotel, and that you and the Vatels would take good care of me until the money comes from home.”
“Put up here!… For four or five weeks!… Hush, my boy! Hush!” she whispered, clutching him feverishly with her bony little claw and casting
