“Bah!”
“Unless it’s the old fellow.”
“Try to get a sight of the bride by stooping very low.”
“I can’t.”
“Never mind, that old cove who has something the matter with his paw I know, and that I’m positive.”
“And what good does it do to know him?”
“No one can tell. Sometimes it does!”
“I don’t care a hang for old fellows, that I don’t!”
“I know him.”
“Know him, if you want to.”
“How the devil does he come to be one of the wedding party?”
“We are in it, too.”
“Where does that wedding come from?”
“How should I know?”
“Listen.”
“Well, what?”
“There’s one thing you ought to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Get off of our trap and spin that wedding.”
“What for?”
“To find out where it goes, and what it is. Hurry up and jump down, trot, my girl, your legs are young.”
“I can’t quit the vehicle.”
“Why not?”
“I’m hired.”
“Ah, the devil!”
“I owe my fishwife day to the prefecture.”
“That’s true.”
“If I leave the cart, the first inspector who gets his eye on me will arrest me. You know that well enough.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m bought by the government for to-day.”
“All the same, that old fellow bothers me.”
“Do the old fellows bother you? But you’re not a young girl.”
“He’s in the first carriage.”
“Well?”
“In the bride’s trap.”
“What then?”
“So he is the father.”
“What concern is that of mine?”
“I tell you that he’s the father.”
“As if he were the only father.”
“Listen.”
“What?”
“I can’t go out otherwise than masked. Here I’m concealed, no one knows that I’m here. But to-morrow, there will be no more maskers. It’s Ash Wednesday. I run the risk of being nabbed. I must sneak back into my hole. But you are free.”
“Not particularly.”
“More than I am, at any rate.”
“Well, what of that?”
“You must try to find out where that wedding party went to.”
“Where it went?”
“Yes.”
“I know.”