they would like to be his, he is equally
uninterested.

"Young or old--pooh!" he says to me, beginning to yawn. For want of
something to do and to lengthen the leaving, he goes up to the
goodwife. "Good-evening, gran'ma," he mumbles, finishing his yawn.

"Good-evening, mes enfants," quavers the old dame. So near, we see her
in detail. She is shriveled, bent and bowed in her old bones, and the
whole of her face is white as the dial of a clock.

And what is she doing? Wedged between her chair and the edge of the
table she is trying to clean some boots. It is a heavy task for her
infantile hands; their movements are uncertain, and her strokes with
the brush sometimes go astray. The boots, too, are very dirty indeed.

Seeing that we are watching her, she whispers to us that she must
polish them well, and this evening too, for they are her little girl's
boots, who is a dressmaker in the town and goes off first thing in the
morning.

Paradis has stooped to look at the boots more closely, and suddenly he
puts his hand out towards them. "Drop it, gran'ma; I'll spruce up your
lass's trotter-cases for you in three secs."

The old woman lodges an objection by shaking her head and her
shoulders. But Paradis takes the boots with authority, while the
grandmother, paralyzed by her weakness, argues the question and opposes
us with shadowy protest.

Paradis has taken a boot in each hand; he holds them gingerly and looks
at them for a moment, and you would even say that he was squeezing them
a little.

"Aren't they small!" he says in a voice which is not what we hear in
the usual way.

He has secured the brushes as well, and sets himself to wielding them
with zealous carefulness. I notice that he is smiling, with his eyes
fixed on his work.

Then, when the mud has gone from the boots, he takes some polish on the
end of the double-pointed brush and caresses them with it intently.

They are dainty boots--quite those of a stylish young lady; rows of
little buttons shine on them.

"Not a single button missing," he whispers to me, and there is pride in
his tone.

He is no longer sleepy; he yawns no more. On the contrary, his lips are
tightly closed; a gleam of youth and spring-time lights up his face;
and he who was on the point of going to sleep seems just to have woke
up.

And where the polish has bestowed a beautiful black his fingers move
over the body of the boot, which opens widely in the upper part and
betrays--eve