Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/431

Rh "Rien encore?"

"Rien encore. Come, Maisie." She hurried along with him, but on the way to the café he said nothing.

 XXX

they were seated there it was different: the place was not below the hotel, but farther along the quay; with wide, clear windows and a floor sprinkled with bran in a manner that gave it for visitors a little of the added charm of a circus. They had pretty much to themselves the painted spaces and the red plush benches; these were shared by a few scattered gentlemen who picked teeth, with facial contortions, behind small bare tables, and by an old personage in particular, a very old personage with a red ribbon in his buttonhole, whose manner of soaking buttered rolls in coffee and then disposing of them in the little that was left of the interval between his nose and chin might at a less anxious hour have cast upon Maisie an almost envious spell. They too had their café au lait and their buttered rolls, determined by Sir Claude's asking her