Page:Malot - Nobodys Boy, Crewe-Jones, 1916.djvu/245

 would have been hard to say why, but such was the case. I knew that it was midday; my watch told me so. What an affair! It seemed to me that a watch was a sort of confidential friend of whom one could ask advice and to whom one could talk.

"Friend watch, what's the time?"

"Just twelve o'clock, my dear Remi."

"Really! Then it's time for me to do this or that. A good thing you reminded me; if you had not, I should have forgotten."

In my joy I had not noticed that Capi was almost as pleased as myself. He pulled me by the leg of my trousers and barked several times. As he continued to bark, I was forced to bestow some attention upon him.

"What do you want, Capi?" I asked.

He looked at me, but I failed to understand him. He waited some moments, then came and stood up against me, putting his paws on the pocket where I had placed my watch. He wanted to know the time to tell the "distinguished audience," like in the days when he had worked with Vitalis.

I showed the watch to him. He looked at it for some time, as though trying to remember, then, wagging his tail, he barked twelve times. He had not forgotten! We could earn money with my watch! That was something I had not counted upon.

Forward march, children!

I took one last look at the prison, behind the