Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/25

Rh as it fell, when I found him gathering into a little basket what looked in the half-darkness like monstrous large snails. With as much indifference as if he were offering me a new kind of cigarette, Vernet put one of these things into my hand, and I saw that it was a beautifully-made miniature sailor's hat. The strands of which it was built were just like twisted brown straw to the eye, though they were of the smallness of packthread; and a neat band of ribbon proportionately slender made all complete. But what were they for? How were they made? The answer was that the design was to sell them, and that they were made of the cords—more artistically twisted and more neatly waxed than usual—that shoemakers use in sewing. As for the bands, Madame Vernet had amongst her treasures a cap which her little daughter had worn in her babyhood; and this cap had close frills of lace, and the frills were inter-studded with tiny loops of ribbon—a fashion of that time. There were dozens of these tiny loops, and every one of them made a band for Vernet's little toy hats. Perhaps in tenderness for the mother's feelings, he would not let her turn the ribbons to their new use, but had applied them himself; and having spent the whole of a foodless day in the manufacture of these little articles, he was now about to go and sell them. He had selected his "pitch" in a flaring bustling street a mile away; and he asked me ("I must lose no time," he said) to accompany him in that direction. I did so, with a cold and heavy stone in my breast which I am sure had no counterpart in his own. As he marched on, in his light and firm soldierly way, he was loud in praise of English liberty: at such a moment that was his theme. Arrived near his "pitch," he bade me good-night with no abatement of the high and easy air that was natural to him; and though I instantly turned back of course, I knew that at a few paces farther the violently proud man moved off the pathway into the gutter, Rh