“Shall we never be done with them?”

The man began in a guttural voice: 

“I was just going to your place, my dear, to offer you a box of Turkish cigarettes.  But I see you are taking a boarding-school out for a walk—­a regular boarding-school, ’pon my word!  You take pupils, eh?  I congratulate you.  Make men of ’em, my dear, make men of ’em.”

Madame Ewans frowned and replied with a curl of the lips: 

“I am with my son and one of my son’s friends.”

The gentleman threw a careless look at one of the lads—­Jean Servien as it happened.

“Capital, capital!” he exclaimed.  “Is that one your son?”

“Not he, indeed!” she cried hotly.

Jean felt he was looked down upon, and as she laid her hand on her son’s shoulder with a proud gesture, he could not help noticing his schoolfellow’s easy air and elegant costume, at the same time casting a glance of disgust at his own jacket, which had been cut down for him by his aunt out of an overcoat of his father’s.

“Shall we be honoured by your presence to-night at the Bouffes?” asked the gentleman.

“No!” replied Madame Ewans, and pushed the two children forward with the tip of her sunshade.

Stepping out gaily, they soon arrive under the chestnuts of the Tuileries, cross the bridge, then down the river-bank, over the shaky gangway, and so on to the steamer pontoon.

Now they are aboard the boat, which exhales a strong, healthy smell of tar under the hot sun.  The long grey walls of the embankments slip by, to be succeeded presently by wooded slopes.

Saint-Cloud!  The moment the ropes are made fast, Madame Ewans springs on to the landing-stage and makes straight for the shrilling of the clarinettes and thunder of the big drums, steering her little charges through the press with the handle of her sunshade.

Jean was mightily surprised when Madame Ewans made him “try his luck” in a lottery.  He had before now gone with his aunt to sundry suburban fairs, but she had always dissuaded him so peremptorily from spending anything that he was firmly persuaded revolving-tables and shooting-galleries were amusements only permitted to a class of people to which he did not belong.  Madame Ewans showed the greatest interest in her son’s success, urging him to give the handle a good vigorous turn.

She was very superstitious about luck, “invoking” the big prizes, clapping her hands in ecstasy whenever Edgar won a halfpenny egg-cup, falling into the depths of despair at every bad shot.  Perhaps she saw an omen in his failure; perhaps she was just blindly eager to have her darling succeed.  After he had lost two or three times, she pulled the boy away and gave the wooden disk such a violent push round as set its cargo of crockery-ware and glass rattling, and proceeded to play on her own account—­once, twice, twenty times, thirty times, with frantic eagerness.  Then followed quite a business about exchanging the small prizes for one big one, as is commonly done.  Finally, she decided for a set of beer jugs and glasses, half of which she gave to each of the two friends to carry.