The little game began the next day. Denise gave her tiny order;
Henri came back with a loaded tray, whose savory contents he placed
before her. Out of the corner of his eye Peter could see the girl's
astonished face when Henri politely insisted that the meal was
hers--that her venerable godfather had ordered it for her! She
looked timidly and fearfully around; but nobody was paying the
slightest attention to her, and after deftly arranging the dishes,
Henri had whisked himself off. She waited for a few minutes; but
Henri hadn't come back. And then, because she was almost famished,
she ate what had been given her. Peter felt his eyes blur.
Henri came back to her presently with wine. He dusted the bottle
lovingly, and filled her glass with a flourish. She looked up with a
tremulous smile:
"My godfather's order, Henri?"
"Your venerable godfather's order, Mademoiselle," he replied
sedately. When she had finished her dinner, he glibly, and with an
expressionless countenance repeated Peter's instructions: she was to
come in, seat herself, tap with her forefinger, and give her orders,
which would be instantly obeyed! No, he did not know her godfather.
Nor did Monsieur le patron. No, he might not even take the sous she
offered him: all, all, had been arranged, Mademoiselle!
She hesitated. Then she called for pen and paper, and scribbled in
violet ink:
MONSIEUR MY GODFATHER,
I see that the good God still permits miracles. You are one.
Accept, then, a poor girl's thanks and prayers!
Thy godchild,
DENISE.
She gave this to Henri, who received it respectfully. Then she went
out, feeling very much better and brighter because of a sadly needed
dinner. She was bewildered, and excited; but she wasn't afraid. She
accepted her miracle, which had come just in the nick of time,
gratefully, with a childlike simplicity. But she used her blue eyes,
and one day they met Peter Champneys's, regarding her with a good
and kind satisfaction; for indeed she looked much better and
brighter, now that she was no longer half starved. Denise had
encountered other eyes, men's eyes; but none had ever met hers with
just such a look as she saw in these clear and golden ones. A flash
of intuition came to her. Only one person in the world could have
eyes like that--it must be, it was, he! And she watched him with an
absorbed and breathless interest.
In these small restaurants of the Quartier one sits so close to
one's neighbors, in a busy hour, that conversation isn't difficult;
it is, rather, inevitable.
"Monsieur," said the young girl, bravely and yet timidly, on an
occasion when they almost touched elbows, "Monsieur,--is it you who
have a god-daughter?"
"Mademoiselle," stammered Peter, who hadn't expected the question.
"I do not know your godfather!" And then he turned red to his ears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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