o disobey the Hawk to-night? I like you for
that. But listen here--did you ever hear them talk of Marquise?"

"No!"

"Parbleu!" swore the vivandiere in her wrath, "you look on at a bamboula
as if it were only a bear-cub dancing, and can only give one 'yes'
and 'no,' as if one were a drummer-boy. Bah! are those your Paris
courtesies?"

"Forgive me, ma belle! I thought you called yourself our comrade, and
would have no 'fine manners.' There is no knowing how to please you."

He might have pleased her simply and easily enough, if he had only
looked up with a shade of interest to that most picturesque picture,
bright as a pastel portrait, that was hung above him in the old
tumble-down Moorish stonework. But his thoughts were with other things;
and a love scene with this fantastic little Amazon did not attract him.
The warm, ripe, mellow little wayside cherry hung directly in his path,
with the sun on its bloom, and the free wind tossing it merrily; but
it had no charm for him. He was musing rather on that costly, delicate,
brilliant-hued, hothouse blossom that could only be reached down by some
rich man's hand, and grew afar on heights where never winter chills, nor
summer tan, could come too rudely on it.

"Come, tell me what is Marquise?--a kitten?" he went on, leaning his arm
still on the sill of her embrasure, and willing to coax her out of her
anger.

"A kitten!" echoed Cigarette contemptuously. "You think me a child, I
suppose?"

"Surely you are not far off it?"

"Mon Dieu! why, I was never a child in my life," retorted Cigarette,
waxing sunny-tempered and confidential again, while she perched herself,
like some gay-feathered mockingbird on a branch, on the window-sill
itself. "When I was two, I used to be beaten; when I was three, I used
to scrape up the cigar ends the officers dropped about, to sell them
again for a bit of black bread; when I was four, I knew all about
Philippe Durron's escape from Beylick, and bit my tongue through, to say
nothing, when my mother flogged me with a mule-whip, because I would
not tell, that she might tell again at the Bureau and get the reward. A
child! Before I was two feet high I had winged my first Arab. He stole
a rabbit I was roasting. Presto! how quick he dropped it when my ball
broke his wrist like a twig!"

And the Friend of the Flag laughed gayly at the recollection, as at the
best piece of mirth with which memory could furnish her.

"But you asked about Marquis