"All right, sonny," she said, "Mealy won't squash you; and if he tries any of his games on you, Ernestine will look after you." She took his head between her two hands and kissed his forehead affectionately, ignoring Mealy Benoît's angry protests. "He's a dear little chap: I like him," she said to the company at large. "What's your name, deary?"
But François Bonbonne the proprietor, with his usual keen eye to business, arrived just then and set down before Mealy Benoît the famous hot wine salad of which he had spoken before. Behind Bonbonne came Bouzille, who had left his turn-out on the pavement and come down into the supper room to eat and drink his five francs, and more if credit could be got.
Benoît caught sight of Hogshead Geoffroy and immediately offered to clink glasses with him; he pushed a glass towards him, inviting him to dip it with the rest into the steaming bowl; but Geoffroy was warming up under the influence of alcohol, and broke into a sudden flame of wrath at sight of Mealy Benoît. If Benoît should be given the first place, it would be a rank injustice, he reflected, for he, Geoffroy, was most certainly the stronger man. And besides, the sturdy Hogshead was beginning to wonder whether his rival might not have devised an odious plot against him and put the famous piece of orange-peel upon the track, but for which Geoffroy would have won hands down. So Geoffroy, very drunk, offered Benoît, who was no whit more sober, the gross affront of refusing to clink glasses with him!
"Why, it's you!" exclaimed Bouzille, in ringing tones of such glad surprise that everybody turned round to see whom he was addressing. Julot and Berthe looked with the rest.
"Why, it's the green man of just now," said the asylum nurse to her companion, and he assented, moodily enough.
Bouzille took no notice of the attention he had provoked, and did not seem to notice that the green man appeared to be anything but pleased at having been recognised.
"I've seen you before, I know," he went on; "where have I met you?"
The green man did not answer; he affected to be engrossed in a most serious conversation with the friend he had brought with him into the supper room, a shabby individual who carried a guitar. But Bouzille was not to be put off, and suddenly he exclaimed, with perfect indifference to what his neighbours might think: