ave happened.

Then, in the distance, coming in his direction, he saw a long, slender
gig which four oarsmen as black as negroes were driving through the
water like an arrow. It came nearer, skimming over the water; a woman
was holding the tiller. Heavens! It looked--it was she! In order to
regulate the rhythm of the stroke, she was singing in her shrill voice a
boating song, which she interrupted for a minute as she got in front of
Patissot. Then, throwing him a kiss, she cried:

"You big goose!"

A DINNER AND SOME OPINIONS

On the occasion of the national celebration Monsieur Antoine Perdrix,
chief of Monsieur Patissot's department, was made a knight of the
Legion of Honor. He had been in service for thirty years under preceding
governments, and for ten years under the present one. His employees,
although grumbling a little at being thus rewarded in the person of
their chief, thought it wise, nevertheless, to offer him a cross studded
with paste diamonds. The new knight, in turn, not wishing to be outdone,
invited them all to dinner for the following Sunday, at his place at
Asnieres.

The house, decorated with Moorish ornaments, looked like a cafe concert,
but its location gave it value, as the railroad cut through the whole
garden, passing within a hundred and fifty feet of the porch. On the
regulation plot of grass stood a basin of Roman cement, containing
goldfish and a stream of water the size of that which comes from a
syringe, which occasionally made microscopic rainbows at which the
guests marvelled.

The feeding of this irrigator was the constant preoccupation of Monsieur
Perdrix, who would sometimes get up at five o'clock in the morning in
order to fill the tank. Then, in his shirt sleeves, his big stomach
almost bursting from his trousers, he would pump wildly, so that on
returning from the office he could have the satisfaction of letting the
fountain play and of imagining that it was cooling off the garden.

On the night of the official dinner all the guests, one after the other,
went into ecstasies over the surroundings, and each time they heard
a train in the distance, Monsieur Perdrix would announce to them its
destination: Saint-Germain, Le Havre, Cherbourg, or Dieppe, and they
would playfully wave to the passengers leaning from the windows.

The whole office force was there. First came Monsieur Capitaine, the
assistant chief; Monsieur Patissot, chief clerk; then Messieurs de
Sombr