DOI article:
Harland, Henry: P'tit-Bleu
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27811#0077
By Henry Harland 73
deprecating frowns, her expostulations, her restraining hand laid on
your arm. And the ordinary run of Latin Quarter girls derive an
incommunicable rapture from seeing their cavaliers wantonly,
purposelessly prodigal. With her own funds, on the contrary,
P'tit-Bleu was free-handed to a fault : Mimi and Zizette knew
whom to go to, when they were hard-up. Neither did she confine
her benefactions to gifts of money, nor limit their operation to her
particular sex. More than one impecunious student owed it to her
skilful needle that his clothes were whole, and his linen maintained
in a habitable state. " Fie, Chalks ! Your coat is torn, there are
three buttons off your waistcoat, and your cuffs are frayed to a
point that is disgraceful. Fll come round to-morrow afternoon,
and mend them for you." And when poor Berthe Dumours was
turned out of the hospital, in the dead of winter, half-cured, and
without a penny in her purse, who took her in, and nursed her,
and provided for her during her convalescence ?
Oh, she was a good little thing. " P'tit-Bleu's all right.
There's nothing the matter with P'tit-Bleu," was Chalk's method
of phrasing it.
At the same time, she could be trying, she could be exasperating.
And she had a temper—a temper. What she made me suffer in
the way of jealousy, during that winter, it would be gruesome to
recount. She enjoyed an exceeding great popularity in the
Quarter ; she was much run after. It were futile to pretend that
she hadn't her caprices. And she held herself free as air. She
would call no man master. You might take what she would give,
and welcome ; but you must claim nothing as your due. You
mustn't assume airs of proprietorship ; you mustn't presume upon
the fact that she was supping with you to-night, to complain if
she should sup to-morrow with another. Her concession of a
privilege did not by any means imply that it was exclusive. She
The Yellow Book—Vol. VIII. E would
deprecating frowns, her expostulations, her restraining hand laid on
your arm. And the ordinary run of Latin Quarter girls derive an
incommunicable rapture from seeing their cavaliers wantonly,
purposelessly prodigal. With her own funds, on the contrary,
P'tit-Bleu was free-handed to a fault : Mimi and Zizette knew
whom to go to, when they were hard-up. Neither did she confine
her benefactions to gifts of money, nor limit their operation to her
particular sex. More than one impecunious student owed it to her
skilful needle that his clothes were whole, and his linen maintained
in a habitable state. " Fie, Chalks ! Your coat is torn, there are
three buttons off your waistcoat, and your cuffs are frayed to a
point that is disgraceful. Fll come round to-morrow afternoon,
and mend them for you." And when poor Berthe Dumours was
turned out of the hospital, in the dead of winter, half-cured, and
without a penny in her purse, who took her in, and nursed her,
and provided for her during her convalescence ?
Oh, she was a good little thing. " P'tit-Bleu's all right.
There's nothing the matter with P'tit-Bleu," was Chalk's method
of phrasing it.
At the same time, she could be trying, she could be exasperating.
And she had a temper—a temper. What she made me suffer in
the way of jealousy, during that winter, it would be gruesome to
recount. She enjoyed an exceeding great popularity in the
Quarter ; she was much run after. It were futile to pretend that
she hadn't her caprices. And she held herself free as air. She
would call no man master. You might take what she would give,
and welcome ; but you must claim nothing as your due. You
mustn't assume airs of proprietorship ; you mustn't presume upon
the fact that she was supping with you to-night, to complain if
she should sup to-morrow with another. Her concession of a
privilege did not by any means imply that it was exclusive. She
The Yellow Book—Vol. VIII. E would