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In the character of the bootmaker, I scrapes acquaintance with a young person employed as housemaid, and very willing to answer questions, and be drawed out.
It is for this that the Holy Church pays him fifteen or is it twenty? pesetas each year. And the bootmaker would growl and shake his head over his last; for, like most who have to do with leather, he was a man of small humour.
He was a tall, thin, young man, with long straggling hair, a fierce eye, very thick lips, and a flat nose, a nose which seemed to be all nostril; and then, below his mouth was a tuft of beard, which he called an imperial. It was the glory of Ontario Moggs to be a politician; it was his ambition to be a poet; it was his nature to be a lover; it was his disgrace to be a bootmaker.
And he, instead of kicking them out into the mews which could have been done easily without Grosvenor Square knowing anything about it, and thereby having its high-class feelings hurt he would blame her when they had all gone, just as if it was her fault that she was the daughter of a respectable bootmaker in the Mile End Road instead of something more likely than not turned out of the third row of the ballet because it couldn't dance, and didn't want to learn.
To all which utterances of a rebellious spirit the breeches-maker made no answer. He knew that Polly would, at least, be true to him; and, as she was as yet free, the field was still open to his candidate. He believed thoroughly that had not his wife interfered, and asked the bootmaker to join that unfortunate dinner party, his daughter and Ralph Newton would now have been engaged together.
He perceived, of course, that unless the barber, the bootmaker, and the banker answered him in terms which the author of the phrase-book directed them to use, he should not get on with them beyond his first question; but he did not allow this to spoil his pleasure in it.
The basement, which has a separate door, gives forth odours of simple Pomeranian meats, and every other house bears to this day the curt but comforting inscription, "Here one eats." It was only to be supposed that the bootmaker at the end of his day would repair for supper to some special haunt near by.
X," and turning back to a previous page, took a sentence at random. It was not a happy selection; it was a speech that would have been superfluous made to any bootmaker. Under the present circumstances, threatened and stifled as we were on every side by boots, it possessed the dignity of positive imbecilitiy. It ran: "One has told me that you have here boots for sale."
He wore correct morning dress and through gold-rimmed pince-nez he stared inquiringly at the caller. "Is his excellency at home?" asked the latter. "I'm from Mr. Jarvis, the bootmaker." "Oh!" said the other, smiling slightly. "Come in. What is your name?" "Parker, sir. From Mr. Jarvis." As the door closed, Parker found himself in a small lobby.
As for Panpan, his street wanderings terminated in his finding employment in a lace manufactory, and it soon became evident that his natural talent here found a congenial occupation. He came by degrees to be happy in his new position of a workman. Then occurred the serious love passage of his life—his meeting with Louise, now Madame Panpan. It was the simplest matter in the world: Panpan, to whom life was nothing without the Sunday quadrille at the barrière, having resolved to figure on the next occasion in a pair of bottes vernis, waited upon his bootmaker—every Parisian has his bootmaker—to issue his mandates concerning their length, shape, and general construction. He entered the boutique of Mons. Cuire, when, lo! he beheld in the little back parlour, the most delicate little foot that ever graced a shoe, or tripped to measure on the grass. He would say nothing of the owner of this miracle; of her face—which was full of intelligence; of her figure—which was gentille toute
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