Page:The fortunes of Fifi (IA fortunesoffifi00seawiala).pdf/147

 the ears of their patient horses. All Paris was out of doors, helping the birds and leaves to make the spring.

Fifi strolled along and found the streets almost as pleasant as the street of the Black Cat, except that she knew everybody in the street of the Black Cat and knew no one at all of all this merry throng. Her first incursion was into a chocolate shop, where she treated both herself and Angéline in a princely manner, as became a lady who had ten notes of a thousand francs to dispose of in a morning's shopping.

While they were sipping their chocolate Fifi was wondering how she could manage to leave Angéline in the lurch and slip off by herself—for Angéline might possibly make trouble for her when she came to dispensing her wealth as she privately planned. But in this, as in all things else that day, fortune favored Fifi. Afar off was heard the rataplan of a marching regiment, with the merry laughter and shuffle of feet of an accompanying crowd.

"What so easy as to get carried along with that crowd?" thought Fifi, as she ran to the door, where the proprietor and all the clerks as well as the cus