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“Good day, Mamselle Onmibus,”ek said Gavroche to her.

Meanwhile, continuing up the street, he saw, quite frozen under a porte-cochère, a beggar girl of thirteen or fourteen, whose clothes were so short that her knees could be seen. The little girl was beginning to be too big a girl for that. Growth plays you such tricks. The skirt becomes short at the moment that nudity becomes indecent.

“Poor girl!” said Gavroche. “She hasn’t even any underwear. But here, take this.”

And, taking off all that good woollen scarf which he had about his neck, he threw it upon the bony and purple shoulders of the beggar girl, where the muffler became a shawl again.

The little girl looked at him with an astonished appearance, and received the shawl in silence. At a certain depth of distress, the poor, in their stupor, groan no longer over evil, and are no longer thankful for good.

This done:

“Brrr!” said Gavroche, shivering worse than St. Martin, who, at least, kept half his cloak.el

At this brrr! the storm, redoubling its fury, became violent. These malignant skies punish good actions.

“Ah,” exclaimed Gavroche, “what does this mean? It’s raining again! Good God, if this continues, I withdraw my subscription.”

And he started walking again.

“It’s all the same,” added he, casting a glance at the beggar girl who was cuddling herself under the shawl, “there is somebody who has some great duds.”

And, looking at the cloud, he cried:

“Gotcha!”

The two children limped along behind him.

As they were passing by one of those thick grated lattices which indicate a baker’s shop, for bread like gold is kept behind iron gratings, Gavroche turned:

“Ah, ha, mômes, have we dined?”

“Monsieur,” answered the elder, “we have not eaten since early this morning.”

“You are then without father or mother?” resumed Gavroche, majestically.

“Excuse us, monsieur, we have a papa and mamma, but we don’t know where they are.”

“Sometimes that’s better than knowing,” said Gavroche, who was a thinker.

“It is two hours now,” continued the elder, “that we have been walking; we have been looking for things in every corner, but we can find nothing.”

“I know,” said Gavroche. “The dogs eat up everything.”

He resumed, after a moment’s silence:

“Ah! we have lost our authors. We don’t know now what we have done with them. That won’t do, gamins. It is stupid to get lost like that for people of any age. Ah, yes, we must licher for all that.”em

Still he asked them no questions. To be without a home, what could be more natural?

Meanwhile he had stopped, and for a few minutes he had been groping and fumbling in all sorts of recesses which he had in his rags.

Finally he raised his head with an air which was only intended for one of satisfaction, but which was in reality triumphant.

“Let us compose ourselves, momignards. Here is enough for supper for three.”

And he took a sou from one of his pockets.

Without giving the two little boys time for amazement, he pushed them both before him into the baker’s shop, and laid his sou on the counter, crying:

“Boy! five centimes’ worth of bread.”

The man, who was the master baker himself, took a loaf and a knife.

“In three pieces, boy!” resumed Gavroche, and he added with dignity:

“There are three of us.”

And seeing that the baker, after having examined the three costumes, had taken a black loaf, he thrust his finger deep into his nose with a respiration as imperious as if he had had the great Frederick’s pinch of snuff at the end of his thumb, and threw full in the baker’s face this indignant apostrophe:

“Whossachuav?”

Those of our readers who may be tempted to see in this summons of Gavroche to the baker a Russian or Polish word, or one of those savage cries which the Iowas and the Botocudos hurl at each other from one bank of a stream to the other in their solitudes, are informed that it is a phrase which they use every day (they, our readers), and which takes the place of this phrase: what is that you have? The baker