The girl turned and walked dolefully back toward the house opposite, and was just passing through the door, when she suddenly jumped for joy and ran back across the street, saying to Paul as she passed him: "Whalebones, small, thin whalebones, to put in the back of a dress, I remember now. Adieu, until to-morrow!" Paul looked after her until she turned into the boulevard; and even when he could no longer see her, he continued to gaze in that direction, as if it prolonged his happiness. But in a moment he exclaimed: "Mon Dieu! I have forgotten that young gentleman's errands!" He was about to start and make up for the time he had lost, when he felt a hand upon his arm. He turned and found that it was the flower girl who was detaining him. "Let me go, Bastringuette, let me go!" he said; "I am in a great hurry; I have some errands to do." "In a hurry, are you? I say! you didn't seem to be a minute ago, for you've been having a nice little chin with the little dressmaker. She plays a pretty game with her mouth, she does. You seem to have had lots of things to tell her, flatterer!" "It's just because I have been talking so long that I am behindhand. By the way, Bastringuette, Sans-Cravate expects you to sup with him to-night at his wine shop on Rue Saint-Lazare. He means to treat everybody." "Shall you be in the crowd?" "Why--perhaps so." "I want you to be--if not, I won't go. Monster! who knows that I love him, that I am cracked over his shape, and still he won't honor me with a look, while he talks yards at a time with little hussies of dressmakers!" "I am not in the habit of making eyes at my friends' mistresses, Bastringuette; and Sans-Cravate is my friend." "I don't care a hang; I haven't sworn to love the same man and no one else all my life. That would be too monotonous; it's all right for the swells to take that kind of oaths and then break 'em. I prefer to act on the square, and I wouldn't hesitate to say before Sans-Cravate that I am stuck on you." "You are mad. Let me go, I insist!" Paul succeeded in releasing his jacket from the flower girl's grasp, and ran off at full speed; while Bastringuette crushed one of her bunches of violets, muttering: "That's what comes of loving such beasts! Well, it don't make any difference; the more he resists me, the more I love him. That's my nature! we can't make ourselves over." V CLOSER ACQUAINTANCE Before returning to the three young men who were about to enter the Passage des Panoramas, let us say a few words with regard to them: it is always well to know the people with whom one has to do.