Page:Ballads of a Bohemian.djvu/25

Rh And then one night he dropped the mask; his eyes were sick with dread, And when I offered him a smoke he groaned and shook his head: “I’m all upset; it’s Angeline… she’s covered with a rash… She’ll maybe die, my little gosse,” cried Julot the apache.

But Angeline, I joy to say, came through the test all right, Though Julot, so they tell me, watched beside her day and night. And when I saw him next, says he: “Come up and dine with me. We’ll buy a beefsteak on the way, a bottle and some brie.” And so I had a merry night within his humble home, And laughed with Angeline the gosse and Gigolette the môme. And every time that Julot used a word the least obscene, How Gigolette would frown at him and point to Angeline: Oh, such a little innocent, with hair of silken floss, I do not wonder they were proud of Angeline the gosse. And when her arms were round his neck, then Julot says to me: “I must work harder now, mon vieux, since I’ve to work for three.”