Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/33

 tramps, there lurked a tender, pleasant, almost a maternal smile; and that to see it one had only to say to the good man—

"How is your little boy?"

Father Stenne was very fond of his son. He was never so happy as in the evening after school when the little fellow came to fetch him, and when they went together round the walks, halting at every bench to speak to the regular loungers, and to reply to their civil greetings.

With the siege all this unfortunately changed. The square was closed; petroleum had been stored in it, and poor Stenne, obliged to keep watch incessantly, passed his life amid the deserted, and partly destroyed, clumps of trees without being able to smoke, and without the company of his son until he returned home late in the evening. You should have seen his moustache when he spoke of the Prussians!

Little Stenne, however, did not complain very much of this new life. A siege is such fun for the street boys! No more school; no lessons; holidays all the time, and the streets just like a fair! The lad stayed out all day till quite evening, running about. He would accompany the battalions of the quarter on their turn of duty to the ramparts, choosing those specially which had good bands; and on this question little Stenne was quite critical. He would have told you plainly that the band of the Ninety-sixth was not good for much; but that the Fifty-fifth had an excellent one. At other times he watched the mobiles drilling, and then there were the queues to occupy him.

With his basket on his arm he would take his place in the long lines which, in the half-light of the winter mornings—those gasless mornings—were formed outside the gates of the butchers and bakers. There the people, waiting for rations, their feet in the puddles, talked politics and made acquaintances; and, as the son of M. Stenne, every one asked the lad his opinion. But the greatest fun of all was the cork-throwing parties—the famous game of galoche—which the Breton mobiles had introduced during the siege. When little Stenne was not on the ramparts, or at the distribution of rations, you would surely find him in the Place Château d'Eau. He did not play galoche himself, you must understand: too much money was needed for that. He contented himself by watching the players "with all his eyes."

One lad—a big fellow in a blue jacket—who never ventured aught but five-franc pieces, especially excited the admiration of little Stenne. When this fellow moved about you could hear the coins jingling in his pocket.

One day, when picking up a piece that had rolled to the feet of our hero, the big boy said to him:

"Ah! that makes your mouth water, eh? Well, if you wish, I will tell you where to find some like this."

When the game was finished he led Stenne to a corner of the Place, and proposed that he should go with him and sell newspapers to the Germans—at thirty