The sight-seers passing below looked up by hundreds and smiled at the
ladies' eager twitter, as, flirting in humming-bird fashion from one
subject to another, they laughed away the half-hours waiting for the
pageant. By and by they fell a-listening, for Madame Delicieuse had
begun a narrative concerning Dr. Mossy. She sat somewhat above her
listeners, her elbow on the arm of her chair, and her plump white hand
waving now and then in graceful gesture, they silently attending with
eyes full of laughter and lips starting apart.
"_Vous savez_," she said (they conversed in French of course), "you know
it is now long that Dr. Mossy and his father have been in disaccord.
Indeed, when have they not differed? For, when Mossy was but a little
boy, his father thought it hard that he was not a rowdy. He switched him
once because he would not play with his toy gun and drum. He was not so
high when his father wished to send him to Paris to enter the French
army; but he would not go. We used to play often together on the
_banquette_--for I am not so very many years younger than he, no
indeed--and, if I wanted some fun, I had only to pull his hair and run
into the house; he would cry, and monsieur papa would come out with his
hand spread open and"--
Madame gave her hand a malicious little sweep, and Joined heartily in
the laugh which followed.
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