Page:The Professor (1857 Volume 1).djvu/192

 and Kint must sometimes be a little fatigued with their labours.

"Des bêtes de somme,—des bêtes de somme," murmured scornfully the director. Meantime I offered him his cup of coffee.

"Servez-vous, mon garçon," said he blandly, when I had put a couple of huge lumps of continental sugar into his cup. "And now tell me why you stayed so long at Mdlle. Reuter's. I know that lessons conclude, in her establishment as in mine, at four o'clock, and when you returned it was past five."

"Mdlle. wished to speak with me, monsieur."

"Indeed! on what subject? if one may ask."

"Mademoiselle talked about nothing, monsieur."

"A fertile topic! And did she discourse thereon in the school-room, before the pupils?"

"No; like you, monsieur, she asked me to walk into her parlour."

"And Madame Reuter—the old duenna—my mother's gossip, was there, of course?"