"But, mamma, what connection is there between this shrub and my father?" queried young Glumeau, looking toward Boulevard du Temple and Porte Saint-Martin at the same moment.
"What's that! what connection? What do you mean by that, Astianax? Isn't to-morrow your father's fête-day, as his name is Honoré? We are going to give him flowers as usual. I select this pomegranate, which is very handsome; I don't see what there is in that to surprise you."
"It isn't that, mamma; I said: 'what connection is there between a pomegranate--_grenadier_--and my father, who has never been a soldier?' Oh! if he had been a soldier, I could understand your choice of this shrub and the allusion, but----"
"But, my dear boy, you are terribly tiresome with your allusions; you want to put allusions in everything; just wait until you are a man."
"Excuse me, dear mamma, but flowers have a language; so in your place I should have thought that a myrtle, the emblem of love----"
"My dear boy, I have been giving your father myrtles for twenty years and he must have had enough of them. Everything in life goes by, and we have used the myrtle long enough; it seems to me that I can properly vary it a little. After twenty years one is not forbidden to change bouquets. I have decided, I am going to buy this pomegranate.--Don't you think, Eolinde, that this will please your father?"
"Oh! ye--ye--yes, it will pl--please him very mu--u--uch."
"But what are you going to buy for him? You must make up your mind, children, for we intend to go to the play after dinner, and it is getting late."
"B--b--bless me!" replied the tall young lady, "I would li--i--ike that fl--fl--flower--you know--you know--it's the--I d--d--don't see it."
"In that case, ask the woman if she has any," said Monsieur Astianax, smiling maliciously, for he very often made fun of the difficulty which his sister had in speaking.
"What a stu--u--u--pid you are, Astianax!" cried the girl, shrugging her shoulders and looking down at her brother as if she were searching for a little dog. "Let me alo--o--one; it's a flow--ower with b--b--bells."
"Oh, I know what you mean, daughter; it is a--I don't know the name; but come, I saw some over yonder."
And the stout lady, having paid for the pomegranate and hired a porter to carry it, led her daughter to the booth of a dealer who had a large assortment of tulips. Mademoiselle Eolinde examined them for some time, then murmured: