“Monsieur has bought my picture,” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “When it’s finished you’ll carry it to him in a cab.”
“In a cab!” cried M. Nioche; and he stared, in a bewildered way, as if he had seen the sun rising at midnight.
“Are you the young lady’s father?” said Newman. “I think she said you speak English.”
“Speak English—yes,” said the old man slowly rubbing his hands. “I will bring it in a cab.”
“Say something, then,” cried his daughter. “Thank him a little—not too much.”
“A little, my daughter, a little?” said M. Nioche perplexed. “How much?”
“Two thousand!” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “Don’t make a fuss or he’ll take back his word.”
“Two thousand!” cried the old man, and he began to fumble for his snuff-box. He looked at Newman from head to foot; he looked at his daughter and then at the picture. “Take care you don’t spoil it!” he cried almost sublimely.
“We must go home,” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “This is a good day’s work. Take care how you carry it!” And she began to put up her utensils.
“How can I thank you?” said M. Nioche. “My English does not suffice.”
“I wish I spoke French as well,” said Newman, good-naturedly. “Your daughter is very clever.”
“Oh, sir!” and M. Nioche looked over his spectacles with tearful eyes and nodded several times with a world of sadness. “She has had an education—_très-supérieure!_ Nothing was spared. Lessons in pastel at ten francs the lesson, lessons in oil at twelve francs. I didn’t look at the francs then. She’s an _artiste_, eh?”
“Do I understand you to say that you have had reverses?” asked Newman.
“Reverses? Oh, sir, misfortunes—terrible.”
“Oh, never fear, you’ll get on your legs again,” said Newman cheerily.
The old man drooped his head on one side and looked at him with an expression of pain, as if this were an unfeeling jest.
“What does he say?” demanded Mademoiselle Noémie.
M. Nioche took a pinch of snuff. “He says I will make my fortune again.”
“Perhaps he will help you. And what else?”
“It is very possible. You believe it yourself, my father?”
“Believe it, my daughter? With this evidence!” And the old man turned afresh, with a staring, wondering homage, to the audacious daub on the easel.
“Ask him, then, if he would not like to learn French.”