'Well, I don't know; it's just a little movement.'
'Ah bien, voilà du propre; between us we have thrown him into a fever!' cried Madame Poupin, who had put down her bowl on a table near her husband's bed and was bending over him, with her hand on his forehead. Eustache was flushed, he had closed his eyes, and it was evident there had been more than enough conversation. Madame Poupin announced as much, with the addition that if the young men wished to make acquaintance they must do it outside; the invalid must be perfectly quiet. They accordingly withdrew, with apologies and promises to return for further news on the morrow, and two minutes afterward Hyacinth found himself standing face to face with his new friend on the pavement in front of M. Poupin's residence, under a street-lamp which struggled ineffectually with the brown winter dusk.
'Is that your name—M. Paul?' he asked, looking up at him.
'Oh, bless you, no; that's only her Frenchified way of putting it. My name is Paul, though—Paul Muniment.'
'And what's your trade?' Hyacinth demanded, with a jump into familiarity; for his companion seemed to have told him a great deal more than was usually conveyed in that item of information.
Paul Muniment looked down at him from above broad shoulders. 'I work at a wholesale chemist's, at Lambeth.'
'And where do you live?'
'I live over the water, too; in the far south of London.'
'And are you going home now?'
'Oh yes, I am going to toddle.'
'And may I toddle with you?'
