I lay my traps down on the bank and begin at the top of my voice:—­

“Madame Laguerre!  Madame Laguerre!  Send Lucette with the boat.”

For a long time there is no response.  A young girl drawing water a short distance below, hearing my cries, says she will come; and some children above, who know me, begin paddling over.  I decline them all.  Experience tells me it is better to wait for madame.

In a few minutes she pushes aside the leaves, peers through, and calls out:—­

“Ah! it is that horrible painter.  Go away!  I have nothing for you.  You are hungry again that you come?”

“Very, madame.  Where is Lucette?”

“Lucette!  Lucette!  It is always Lucette.  Lu-c-e-t-t-e!” This in a shrill key.  “It is the painter.  Come quick.”

I have known Lucette for years, even when she was a barefooted little tangle-hair, peeping at me with her great brown eyes from beneath her ragged straw hat.  She wears high-heeled slippers now, and sometimes on Sundays dainty silk stockings, and her hair is braided down her back, little French Marguerite that she is, and her hat is never ragged any more, nor her hair tangled.  Her eyes, though, are still the same velvety, half-drooping eyes, always opening and shutting and never still.

As she springs into the boat and pulls towards me I note how round and trim she is, and before we have landed at Madame Laguerre’s feet I have counted up Lucette’s birthdays,—­those that I know myself,—­and find to my surprise that she must be eighteen.  We have always been the best of friends, Lucette and I, ever since she looked over my shoulder years ago and watched me dot in the outlines of her boat, with her dog Mustif sitting demurely in the bow.

Madame, her mother, begins again:—­

“Do you know that it is Saturday that you come again to bother?  Now it will be a filet, of course, with mushrooms and tomato salad; and there are no mushrooms, and no tomatoes, and nothing.  You are horrible.  Then, when I get it ready, you say you will come at three.  ’Yes, madame; at three,’—­mimicking me,—­’sure, very sure.’  But it is four, five, o’clock—­and then everything is burned up waiting.  Ah!  I know you.”

This goes on always, and has for years.  Presently she softens, for she is the most tender-hearted of women, and would do anything in the world to please me.

“But, then, you will be tired, and of course you must have something.  I remember now there is a chicken.  How will the chicken do?  Oh, the chicken it is lovely, charmant.  And some pease—­fresh.  Monsieur picked them himself this morning.  And some Roquefort, with an olive.  Ah!  You leave it to me; but at three—­no later—­not one minute. Sacre!  Vous etes le diable!”

As we walk under the arbor and by the great trees, towards the cottage, Lucette following with the oars, I inquire after monsieur, and find that he is in the city, and very well and very busy, and will return at sundown.  He has a shop of his own in the upper part where he makes passe-partouts.  Here, at his home, madame maintains a simple restaurant for tramps like me.