who was so fat that she
couldn't run properly, let the water trickle between her fingers on to
her frock, so that by the time of her sixth journey she looked as if she
had been rolled in the gutter. Muche chuckled with delight on beholding
her dreadful condition. He made her sit down beside him under a
rhododendron near the garden they had made, and told her that the trees
were already beginning to grow. He had taken hold of her hand and called
her his little wife.

"You're not sorry now that you came, are you," he asked, "instead of
mooning about on the pavement, where there was nothing to do? I know all
sorts of fun we can have in the streets; you must come with me again.
You will, won't you? But you mustn't say anything to your mother, mind.
If you say a word to her, I'll pull your hair the next time I come past
your shop."

Pauline consented to everything; and then, as a last attention, Muche
filled both pockets of her pinafore with mould. However, all the sweets
were finished, and the girl began to get uneasy, and ceased playing.
Muche thereupon started pinching her, and she burst into tears, sobbing
that she wanted to go away. But at this the lad only grinned, and played
the bully, threatening that he would not take her home at all. Then she
grew terribly alarmed, and sobbed and gasped like a maiden in the power
of a libertine. Muche would certainly have ended by punching her in
order to stop her row, had not a shrill voice, the voice of Mademoiselle
Saget, exclaimed, close by: "Why, I declare it's Pauline! Leave her
alone, you wicked young scoundrel!"

Then the old maid took the girl by the hand, with endless expressions
of amazement at the pitiful condition of her clothes. Muche showed no
alarm, but followed them, chuckling to himself, and declaring that it
was Pauline who had wanted to come with him, and had tumbled down.

Mademoiselle Saget was a regular frequenter of the Square des Innocents.
Every afternoon she would spend a good hour there to keep herself well
posted in the gossip of the common people. On either side there is a
long crescent of benches placed end to end; and on these the poor folks
who stifle in the hovels of the neighbouring narrow streets assemble in
crowds. There are withered, chilly-looking old women in tumbled caps,
and young ones in loose jackets and carelessly fastened skirts, with
bare heads and tired, faded faces, eloquent of the wretchedness of their
lives. There are some men