It was your mother who made the acquaintance with him in the shop, was it not, Louise?
He first came to order something, and then he called frequently.

We knew him as a customer before we knew him as a friend." Pierre, who was eating beans, sticking his fork into them one by one as if he were spitting them, went on: "And when was it that you made his acquaintance ?" Again Roland sat thinking, but he could remember no more and appealed to his wife's better memory.
"In what year was it, Louise?
You surely have not forgotten, you who remember everything.

Let me see--it was in--in--in fifty-five or fifty-six?
Try to remember.

You ought to know better than I." She did in fact think it over for some minutes, and then replied in a steady voice and with calm decision: "It was in fifty-eight, old man.

Pierre was three years old.