They were out a long time, but he felt no anxiety, as he reflected that Mr. Flack’s very profession would somehow make everything turn out to their profit. The bright French afternoon waned without bringing them back, yet Mr. Dosson still revolved about the court till he might have been taken for a valet de place hoping to pick up custom. The landlady smiled at him sometimes as she passed and re-passed, and even ventured to remark disinterestedly that it was a pity to waste such a lovely day indoors--not to take a turn and see what was going on in Paris. But Mr. Dosson had no sense of waste: that came to him much more when he was confronted with historical monuments or beauties of nature or art, which affected him as the talk of people naming others, naming friends of theirs, whom he had never heard of: then he was aware of a degree of waste for the others, as if somebody lost something--but never when he lounged in that simplifying yet so comprehensive way in the court. It wanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner--THAT historic fact was not beyond his measure--when Delia and Francie at last met his view, still accompanied by Mr. Flack and sauntering in, at a little distance from each other, with a jaded air which was not in the least a tribute to his possible solicitude. They dropped into chairs and joked with each other, mingling sociability and languor, on the subject of what they had seen and done--a question into which he felt as yet the delicacy of enquiring. But they had evidently done a good deal and had a good time: an impression sufficient to rescue Mr. Dosson personally from the consciousness of failure. “Won’t you just step in and take dinner with us?” he asked of the young man with a friendliness to which everything appeared to minister. “Well, that’s a handsome offer,” George Flack replied while Delia put it on record that they had each eaten about thirty cakes. “Well, I wondered what you were doing so long. But never mind your cakes. It’s twenty minutes past six, and the table d’hote’s on time.” “You don’t mean to say you dine at the table d’hote!” Mr. Flack cried. “Why, don’t you like that?”--and Francie’s candour of appeal to their comrade’s taste was celestial. “Well, it isn’t what you must build on when you come to Paris. Too many flowerpots and chickens’ legs.” “Well, would you like one of these restaurants?” asked Mr. Dosson. “_I_ don’t care--if you show us a good one.” “Oh I’ll show you a good one--don’t you worry.” Mr. Flack’s tone was ever that of keeping the poor gentleman mildly but firmly in his place. “Well, you’ve got to order the dinner then,” said Francie. “Well, you’ll see how I could do it!” He towered over her in the pride of this feat. “He has got an interest in some place,” Delia declared. “He has taken us to ever so many stores where he gets his commission.”