The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (4.1895)

The Bohemian Girl

By Henry Harland

I

Iwoke up very gradually this morning, and it took me a little
while to bethink myself where I had slept—that it had not
been in my own room in the Cromwell Road. I lay a-bed, with
eyes half-closed, drowsily looking forward to the usual procession
of sober-hued London hours, and, for the moment, quite forgot
the journey of yesterday, and how it had left me in Paris, a guest
in the smart new house of my old friend, Nina Childe. Indeed,
it was not until somebody tapped on my door, and I roused
myself to call out, “ Come in,” that I noticed the strangeness of
the wall-paper, and then, after an instant of perplexity, suddenly
remembered. Oh, with a wonderful lightening of the spirit, I can
teil you.

A white-capped, brisk young woman, with a fresh-coloured,
wholesome peasant face, came in, bearing a tray—Jeanne, Nina’s
femme-de-chambre.

cc Bonjour, monsieur,” she cried cheerily. “ I bring monsieur
his coffee.” And her announcement was followed by a fragrance
—the softly-sung response of the coffee-sprite. Her tray, with its
pretty freight of silver and linen, primrose butter, and gently-

browned