Oh, wonderful. A precocious child. Worse than your average gamin, really. You could box a gamin's ears for breaking streetlamps, but you couldn't do anything about a precocious child.

"For heaven's sake stop apologizing," Javert said shortly. "I hear enough of that already; you ought to know."

He was rapidly tiring of this conversation; somehow everyone he talked to managed to turn the conversation to him. "You can, however, make up for it somewhat if you tell me how the hell this thing works." A brief gesture indicated the bus around them. He supposed that, as the fact that he was a century and a half behind was no longer a secret between them, he needn't bother being embarrassed about it.