Philippe’s going a soldiering,” she thought as she put her plate and cup back on the shelf where the Bents kept their assortment of china.

A knock at the door! Who could it be? No[84] mail came to her and no friends were left to come.

[84]

“Mam’selle!” and bowing low before her was the lean old partner of St. Cloud, Père Tricot. “Mam’selle, my good wife and I, as well as our poor little daughter-in-law, we all want you to come and make one of our humble menage.”

“Want me!” exclaimed Judy, her eyes shining.

“Yes, Mam’selle,” he said simply. “We have talked it over and we think you are too young to be so much alone and then if—the—the—well, I have too much respect for Mam’selle to call their name,—if they do get in Paris, I can protect you with my own women. I am not so old that I cannot hit many a lick yet—indeed, I would enlist again if they would have me; but my good wife says they may need me more here in Paris and I must rest tranquilly here and do the work for France that I can best do. Will you come, Mam’selle?”

“Come! Oh, Père Tricot, I’ll be too glad to come. When?”

“Immediately!”[85]

[85]

Judy’s valise was soon packed and the studio carefully locked, the key handed over to the concierge, and she was arm in arm with her old friend on her way to her new home in the little shop on the Boulevarde Montparnasse.

Mère Tricot, who looked like a member of the Commune but acted like a dear, kindly old Granny, took the girl to her bosom.

“What did I tell you? I knew she would come,” she cried to her husband, who had hurried into the shop to wait on a customer. It was a delicatessen shop and very appetizing did the food look to poor Judy, who felt as though she had never eaten in her life.

“Tell me!” he exclaimed as he weighed out cooked spinach to a small child who wanted two sous’ worth. “Tell me, indeed! You said Mam’selle would not walk on the street with an old peasant in a faded blouse if she would come at all, and I—I said Mam’selle was what the Americans call a good sport and would walk on the street with an old peasant, if she liked him, in any kind of clothes he happened to be in, rags[86] even. Bah! You were wrong and I was right.”

[86]

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