"You must come and dine with me to-morrow; I have a box for the opera. You love music, or you are not the Pierre Lebas whom I remember sitting with his violin at an open window. So come early, come before six; I have ever so much to ask you. And what has brought you to London?"
"A very little business and a great deal of pleasure; but all in a week," said the little man, with a shrug and a hearty laugh. "I have come over here about some little things like that." He smiled archly as he produced from his waistcoat pocket a little flat box with a glass top, and shook something in it. "Commerce, you see. I have to see two or three more of the London people, and then my business will have terminated, and nothing remain for the rest of the week but pleasure--ha, ha!"
"You left all at home well, I hope--children?" He was going to say "Madame," but a good many years had passed.
"I have seven children. Monsieur will remember two. Three are by my first marriage, four by my second, and all enjoy the very best health. Three are very young--three, two, one year old; and they say a fourth is not impossible very soon," he added archly.
Longcluse laughed kindly, and laid his hand upon his shoulder.
"You must take charge of a little present for each from me, and one for Madame. And the old business still flourishes?"
"A thousand thanks! yes, the business is the same--the file, the chisel, and knife." And he made a corresponding movement of his hand as he mentioned each instrument.
"_Hush!_" said Longcluse, smiling, so that no one who did not hear him would have supposed there was so much cautious emphasis in the word. "My good friend, remember there are details we talk of, you and I together, that are not to be mentioned so suitably in a place like this," and he pressed his hand on his wrist, and shook it gently.
"A thousand pardons! I am, I know, too careless, and let my tongue too often run before my caution. My wife, she says, 'You can't wash your shirt but you must tell the world.' It is my weakness truly. She is a woman of extraordinary penetration."
Mr. Longcluse glanced from the corners of his eyes about the room. Perhaps he wished to ascertain whether his talk with this man, whom you would have taken to be little above the level of a French mechanic, had excited anyone's attention. But there was nothing to make him think so.