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through, began to grow warm once more.
‘Ah, by the way,’ continued Gavroche, ‘what were you
bawling about?’
And pointing out the little one to his brother:—
‘A mite like that, I’ve nothing to say about, but the idea
of a big fellow like you crying! It’s idiotic; you looked like a
ca lf.’
‘Gracious,’ replied the child, ‘we have no lodging.’
‘Bother!’ retorted Gavroche, ‘you don’t say ‘lodgings,’
you say ‘crib.’’
‘And then, we were afraid of being alone like that at
nig ht.’
‘You don’t say ‘night,’ you say ‘darkmans.’’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the child.
‘Listen,’ went on Gavroche, ‘you must never bawl again
over anything. I’ll take care of you. You shall see what fun
we’ll have. In summer, we’ll go to the Glaciere with Navet,
one of my pals, we’ll bathe in the Gare, we’ll run stark na-
ked in front of the rafts on the bridge at Austerlitz,—that
makes the laundresses raging. They scream, they get mad,
and if you only knew how ridiculous they are! We’ll go and
see the man-skeleton. And then I’ll take you to the play. I’ll
take you to see Frederick Lemaitre. I have tickets, I know
some of the actors, I even played in a piece once. There were
a lot of us fellers, and we ran under a cloth, and that made
the sea. I’ll get you an engagement at my theatre. We’ll go
to see the savages. They ain’t real, those savages ain’t. They
wear pink tights that go all in wrinkles, and you can see
where their elbows have been darned with white. Then,