During the winter that followed, P’tit-Bleu and I supped together somewhat frequently. She was a mere little animal, she had no soul; but she was the nicest little animal, and she had instincts. She was more than good-natured, she was kind-hearted; and, according to her unconventional standards, she was conscientious. It would have amused and touched you, for example, if you had been taking her about, to notice her intense solicitude lest you should conduct her entertainment upon a scale too lavish, her deprecating frowns, her expostulations, her restraining hand laid on your arm. And the ordinary run of Latin Quarter girls derive an incommunicable rapture from seeing their cavaliers wantonly, purposelessly prodigal. With her own funds, on the contrary, P’tit-Bleu was free-handed to a fault: Mimi and Zizette knew whom to go to, when they were hard-up. Neither did she confine her benefactions to gifts of money, nor limit their operation to her particular sex. More than one impecunious student owed it to her skilful needle that his clothes were whole, and his linen maintained in a habitable state. “Fie, Chalks! Your coat is torn, there are three buttons off your waistcoat, and your cuffs are frayed to a point that is disgraceful. I’ll come round to-morrow afternoon, and mend them for you.” And when poor Berthe Dumours was turned out of the hospital, in the dead of winter, half-cured, and without a penny in her purse, who took her in, and nursed her, and provided for her during her convalescence? Oh, she was a good little thing. “P’tit-Bleu’s all right. There’s nothing the matter with P’tit-Bleu,” was Chalks’s method of phrasing it. At the same time, she could be trying, she could be exasperating. And she had a temper—a temper. What she made me suffer in the way of jealousy, during that winter, it would be gruesome to recount. She enjoyed an exceeding great popularity in the Quarter; she was much run after. It were futile to pretend that she hadn’t her caprices. And she held herself free as air. She would call no man master. You might take what she would give, and welcome; but you must claim nothing as your due. You mustn’t presume upon the fact that she was supping with you to-night, to complain if she should sup tomorrow with another. Her concession of a privilege did not by any means imply that it was exclusive. She would endure no exactions, no control or interference, no surveillance, above all, no reproaches. Mercy, how angry she would become if I ventured any, how hoighty-toighty and unapproachable. “You imagine that I am your property? Did you invent me? One would say you held a Government patent. All rights reserved! Thank you. You fancy perhaps that Paris is Constantinople? Ah, mais non!” She had a temper and a flow of language. There were points you couldn’t touch without precipitating hail and lightning.