Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/199

"Wherever can Charlotte be?"

ONFOUND it! Wherever can Charlotte be?"

It is M. Chapoulot who speaks, and, as the words show, M. Chapoulot is out of humour. Ordinarily M. Chapoulot is as good-tempered and easy-going as one would expect in a man of sixty, who, having been, like John Gilpin in his day, a linen-draper bold, has in good time retired to enjoy a modest competency in repose. Your wealthy London tradesman, now, who has grown rich beneath the shadow of St. Paul's, if he retires at all before death or disease puts him suddenly hors de combat, flies off to spend his fortune at Brighton, or Bath, or Cheltenham—anywhere rather than in the great Metropolis where he has made it. But M. Chapoulot, like the true Parisian he is, will never desert his Ville Lumière, and has retired no farther than from the bustle of the boulevards to the more peaceful Rue de la Trocadéro.

There he now lives with his only daughter Charlotte and an old faithful servant of the family, and it is the former whom he is at this moment impatiently awaiting.

It is dinner-time with the Chapoulots, who dine at six. One might see it by the snowy table-cloth, the neatly rolled serviettes with their little ivory rings, the plates, the glasses, and there, lifting its head in sovereignty over all, the tall wine-bottle with its petit blanc vin, which is to the Parisian what tea and coffee, and beer, and all the beverages of the day are to the average Englishman.

M. Chapoulot always begins his dinner with punctuality, but he has never begun it without Charlotte. And Charlotte comes not. Five minutes past six, and M. Chapoulot's impatience becomes annoyance; ten minutes, and it is even anger; a quarter past, and he