Eponine felt like begging was below her, but theft never was. She herself noted the irony. In society, one made you pitiable, the other made you a scoundrel, but in her eyes, one made you ashamed to be alive, and the other made you feel accomplished. You'd outwitted someone, taken something from the over-privileged that they'd never give otherwise. So, after she'd "half-fainted from the heat", and knocked into a gentleman, she walked away with a bit of a swagger as she pocketed his purse. Must of it would have to go to her parents-they always found out- but she could get herself breakfast at least. She bought two biscuits off a street seller, then settled on a doorstep to count the coins. One biscuit she gnawed at, the other she left on the porch. The contact with the stone would leave it far cleaner than contact with her skirt.
When she was finished counting, it was gone. The bush by the porch gave the slightest twitch. She plunged her hand into its depths, and pulled out the rat by his collar.
It was Gavroche.
She dropped him in surprise. It had been three years. He took off.
"You going to leave the other?" she called.
He stopped at a safe distance, and turned, surprised.
"What's that you say, miss?"
"'Ponine's good enough for you."
"It wasn't good enough for me when we lived together."
She laughed in surprise. He had wit beyond his years.
"When we lived together, I never saw beyond my mother's eyes." She thought of Marius. "I've been lookin' through some different ones lately." She held out the half gone biscuit. "'Ere. Take this, if you don't mind a sister's spit."
He was suspicious, but he eyed it hungrily.
"I'm a hard kicker." he warned.
"I'd be ashamed if you weren't."
He inched forward, took the biscuit, and jumped back.
"I don't bite." she said.
"Another change."
"That was three years ago." said Eponine.
She always found it hard to apologize, when she believed the world in general had done her a great deal of wrong.
"I know that, miss." he said. "It was around the same time I last slept in a bed."
A shameless ploy, but she barely noticed it.
"I can't get mum and dad to take you back," she said, "but you can come to me when you can't get food nowhere else, and I'll see you don't starve."
"Why would you do that for me, miss?"
"Because I owe you for treating you the way I did, and I pay my dues."
She fished out a coin from her skirt.
"You can have this, if you stop calling me miss."
He took it. "Alright, ma'am."