At sight of Berthe, Hogshead Geoffroy so far departed from custom as not to give an order to the patronne at the bar; instead, he rose and went towards the girl and unceremoniously embraced her.
“Ah-ha, little sister, there you are! Why, I was just that moment thinking of you!” He drew her to the back of the shop, towards a bunch of sturdy, square-shouldered fellows drinking there, to whom he introduced her. “Now then, mates, try to behave yourselves; I’m bringing a charming young lady to see you, my sister Berthe, little Bob—Bobinette, as we called her when we lived with the old folks.” The girl blushed, a little uneasy at finding herself in such a mixed company, but Hogshead Geoffroy put everyone at ease; he put his great hand under Berthe’s chin and tilted her head back. “Don’t you think she is pretty, this little sister of mine? She’s the very spit of her brother!” There was a general roar of laughter. The contrast between the two figures was so great that it seemed impossible there could be any relationship between them: the graceful, slender, tiny Parisienne looking tinier still beside the huge colossus of a man six feet high, with the chest of a bull and the shoulders of an athlete. “We don’t seem to be built on quite the same lines,” M. Geoffroy admitted, “but all the same there is a family likeness!”
The men made room for the girl, and after she had yielded to the general insistence and accepted a glass of white wine, Geoffroy bent forward and spoke in a lower tone.
“Well, what do you want with me?”
“I want to talk to you about something which will interest you, I’m sure,” Berthe answered.
“Anything to be got out of it?” was the giant’s next enquiry.
Berthe smiled.
“I expect so, or I wouldn’t have troubled you.”
“Whenever there’s any money to be picked up the Hogshead’s always on,” he replied: “especially just now when things aren’t any too bright, though I may tell you I think there’s going to be an alteration in that respect.”
“Have you got a situation?” Berthe asked in some surprise.
Hogshead Geoffroy laid a finger on his lip.
“It’s still a secret,” he said, “but there’s no harm in talking it over, for everybody here knows all about it,” and at interminable length, and with many a pause for libations, he explained that he was a candidate for an appointment as Market Porter. He had been cramming for a fortnight past, in order to emerge triumphantly from the examination to which candidates were always subjected, and that very morning he had sat in the Hôtel de Ville wrestling with nothing less than a problem in arithmetic. In proof, he produced from his pocket a crumpled, greasy and wine-stained sheet of paper scrawled all over with childish writing and figures, and showed it to his sister, immensely proud of the effect he was producing on her. “A problem,” he repeated. “See here: two taps fill a tank at the rate of twenty litres a minute, and a third tap empties it at the rate of fifteen hundred litres an hour. How long will it take for the tank to get full?”
A friend of Geoffroy’s broke in: it was Mealy Benoît, his most formidable competitor for the appointment.
“And how long will it take for you to get full?” he asked with a great laugh.
Hogshead Geoffroy banged his fist on the table.
“This is a serious conversation,” he said, and turned again to his sister, who wanted to know if he had succeeded in finding the answer to the problem. “Maybe,” he replied. “I worked by rule of thumb, for, as you know, arithmetic and all those devil’s funniments aren’t in my line. To sit for an hour, writing at a table in the great hall of the Hôtel de Ville—not much! It made me sweat more than carrying four hundredweight!”
But the company was preparing to make a move. Time was getting on, and at six o’clock the second part of the examination, the physical test, was to be held in the Fish Market. Mealy Benoît had paid his score already, and Hogshead Geoffroy’s deferent escort of friends was getting restless. Berthe won fresh favour in her brother’s eyes by paying for their refreshments with a ten franc piece and leaving the change to be placed to his credit, and then with him she left the wineshop.
The annual competition for an appointment as Market Porter is held at the end of September. It is a great event. There are generally many candidates, but only two or three, and sometimes less, of the best are picked. The posts are few and good, for the number of porters is limited. The examination is in two parts: one purely intellectual, consisting of some simple problem and a little dictation, the other physical, in which the candidates have to carry a sack of meal weighing three hundredweight a distance of two hundred yards in the shortest time.
At six o’clock punctually the market women were all in their places along the pavement by their respective stalls. The hall was decorated with flags; the salesmen and regular shopmen were provided with chairs, and their assistants were behind them, with the sweepers and
