"Ah, Madame," she said to Miss Biron, "in one short month he will not have a stitch to wear--out of the largesse of four trunks full. And the las' command of Madame Fouchette, it was 'Angélique, always make Monsieur André François to look like the little prince.' _Ciel!_ how can one make heem to look like the little prince when thees so savage boys tear off his clothes? But I do my ver' bes'--I darn and darn and darn heem." André François made no one his confidant, but day by day he grew more somber and silent. His early garrulity was quite gone. Instead of the air of hauteur which characterized him on his entrance to the town, he now had a pathetic droop. He even became careless about his clothes. "He used to be so proud, so debonair," said Angélique sadly, "when he have the clean, white suit on, he is like the peacock, he know he is beautiful--but now--he does not care what he have on. No!" "What can be the matter?" asked Miss Biron anxiously, for she was really worried by André François' looks; "he has never been seriously hurt in these little school-boy fights." "_Eh, bien!_ Madame! Is it not of a seriousness to be wound' in the pride? To be insult'? Monsieur André François has been made the gross insult many times. Those insult, they knaw heem in his heart. He zink. He zink all the time now. He zink of those many insult'! Some day he will have his revengement--you see." About this time the manager of the White Star noticed a falling off in the number of applicants for his peculiar variety of "job." There was a slump in the André François market. One morning he called in a youngster whom he saw going early to school, stated his terms, and made his usual proposal. The boy hesitated a few moments, then said: "It'll cost yer a dollar an' a quarter now, Mr. Biron. Yer see, 'taint so easy as 'twas at first. 'Course Andray Franswa never runs, an' it's easy t' git him, but he's growin' awful savage. He kicks an' bites somethin' fierce, sir. He nearly chewed Harry Peters' finger offer him day 'fore yesterday." The manager paid the extra quarter without any demur. It was about this time also that Mr. Biron made a discovery which gratified him. He found, secreted under a pillow in the window-seat where André François usually sat, a dusty, copiously diagrammed book entitled, "The Manly Art of Self-Defense." It was an edition of twenty years ago, and had been used by Mr. Biron himself during his college days. He put it back carefully and held his silence. The following evening he proceeded in an experimental, roundabout way to get into a conversation with his son. "Andrew," he said, with sociable casualness, to his heir, who now always ensconced himself in the window-seat directly after dinner, and kept a moody silence until Angélique took him off to bed, "you have never told me about your school days in France." Accepting this remark as the statement of an irrefutable fact, André François merely remained politely silent.