“Cream?” he suggested.
“No. I’ve got that down. Oh, I know. There was a poor woman at the
butter-stall with the cutest little boy. She was getting the cheapest
butter, and when they told her eggs were seven francs—they’ve gone up,
you know—she wouldn’t have any. And there was I, getting the best
butter and a pot of honey and some cream. It seemed so awful. . . . And
the little boy was watching me with great, big eyes. So I asked him if
he liked honey. . . . D’you know, wrapped up in paper he’d got a little
empty jar? And his mother said that he always took it when he went to
the market with her, and that if ever she had a little money over, then
they spent it on honey, and his little jar was filled. She said he was
wonderful—never complained. For weeks he’d brought his jar back empty,
but he’d never cried or asked for anything. And he was only four. . . .
You ought to have seen his face while it was being filled.”
“I’d rather ’ve seen yours,” said Simon Beaulieu. His wife blew him a
kiss. “By the way, I’ve always meant to ask you and I’ve always
forgotten till now. That night at Breathless, as we were going in, you
said I was unlike my namesake because he would have plunged.”
“I remember,” said Patricia.
“And then you qualified that, and said that in a way we were alike.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve always meant to ask you—what did you mean?”
Patricia crossed to her husband and set her cheek against his.
“I meant that you had the keys of heaven,” she said. “And I was
perfectly right.”