Molly Brown of Kentucky Part 7

Bah! You were wrong and I was right."

The old Tricots were forever wrangling but it was always in a semi-humorous manner, and their great devotion to each other was always apparent. Judy found it was better never to take sides with either one as the moment she did both of them were against her.

How homelike the little apartment was behind the shops! It consisted of two bed rooms, a living room which opened into the shop and a tiny tiled kitchen about the size of a kitchen on a dining car--so tiny that it seemed a miracle that all the food displayed so appetizingly in the windows and gla.s.s cases of the shop should have been prepared there.

"It is so good of you to have me and I want to come more than I can say, but you must let me board with you. I couldn't stay unless you do."

"That is as you choose, Mam'selle," said the old woman. "We do not want to make money on you, but you can pay for your keep if you want to."

"All right, Mother, but I must help some, help in the shop or mind the baby, clean up the apartment, anything! I can't cook a little bit, but I can do other things."

"No woman can cook," a.s.serted old Tricot. "They lack the touch."

"Ah! Braggart! If I lay thee out with this pastry board, I'll not lack the touch," laughed the wife. She was making wonderful little tarts with crimped edges to be filled with a.s.sortments of confiture.

"Let me mind the shop, then. I know I can do that."

"Well, that will not be bad," agreed old Tricot. "While Marie (the daughter-in-law) washes the linen and you make the tarts, Mam'selle can keep the shop, but no board must she pay. I'll be bound new customers will flock to us to buy of the pretty face." Judy blushed with pleasure at the old peasant's compliment.

"And thou, laggard and sloth! What will thou do while the women slave?"

"I--Oh, I will go to the Tabac's to see what news there is, and later to see if Jean is to the front."

"Well, we cannot hear from Jean to-day and Paris can still stand without thy political opinion," but she laughed and shoved him from the shop, a very tender expression on her lined old face.

"These men! They think themselves of much importance," she said as she resumed her pastry making.

Having tied a great linen ap.r.o.n around Judy's slender waist (much slenderer in the last month from her economical living), and having instructed her in the prices of the cooked food displayed in the show cases, Mere Tricot turned over the shop to her care. The rosy baby was lying in a wooden cradle in the back of the little shop and the grandmother was in plain view in the tiny kitchen to be seen beyond the living room.

"Well, I fancy I am almost domesticated," thought Judy. "What an interior this would make--baby in foreground and old Mother Tricot on through with her rolling pin. Light fine! I've a great mind to paint while I am keeping shop, sketch, anyhow."

She whipped out her sketch book and sketched in her motive with sure and clever strokes, but art is long and shops must be kept. Customers began to pile in. The spinach was very popular and Judy became quite an adept in dishing it out and weighing it. Potato salad was next in demand and cooked tongue and rosbif disappeared rapidly. Many soldiers lounged in, eating their sandwiches in the shop. Judy enjoyed her morning greatly but she could not remember ever in her life having worked harder.

When the tarts were finished and displayed temptingly in the window, swarms of children arrived. It seemed that Mere Tricot's tarts were famous in the Quarter. More soldiers came, too. Among them was a face strangely familiar to the amateur shop girl. Who could it be? It was the face of a typical Boulevardier: dissipated, ogling eyes; black moustache and beard waxed until they looked like sharp spikes; a face not homely but rather handsome, except for its expression of infinite conceit and impertinence.

"I have never seen him before, I fancy. It is just the type that is familiar to me," she thought. "_Mais quel type!_"

Judy was looking very pretty, with her cheeks flushed from the excitement of weighing out spinach and salad, making change where sous were thought of as though they were gold and following the patois of the peasants that came to buy and the argot of the gamin. She had donned a white cap of Marie's which was most becoming. Judy, always ready to act a part, with an instinctive dramatic spirit had entered into the role of shop keeper with a vim that bade fair to make the Tricots' the most popular place on Boulevarde Montparna.s.se. Her French had fortunately improved greatly since her arrival in Paris more than two years before and now she flattered herself that one could not tell she was not Parisienne.

The soldier with the ogling eyes and waxed moustache lingered in the shop when his companions had made their purchases and departed. He insisted upon knowing the price of every ware displayed. He asked her to name the various confitures in the tarts, which she did rather wearily as his persistence was most annoying. She went through the test, however, with as good a grace as possible. Shop girls must not be squeamish, she realized.

One particularly inviting gooseberry tart was left on the tray. Judy had had her eye on it from the first and trembled every time a purchaser came for tarts. She meant to ask Mere Tricot for it, if only no one bought it. And now this particularly objectionable customer with his rolling black eyes and waxed moustache was asking her what kind it was!

Why did he not buy what he wanted and leave?

"_Eh? Qu'est-ce que c'est?_" he demanded with an amused leer as he pointed a much manicured forefinger at that particularly desirable tart.

Judy was tired and the French for gooseberry left her as is the way with an acquired language. Instead of _groseille_ which was the word she wanted, she blurted out in plain English:

"Gooseberry jam!"

"Ah, I have bean pense so mooch. You may spick ze Eengleesh with me, Mees. Gueseberry jaam! Ha, ha! An' now, Mees, there iss wan question I should lak a demande of the so beootifool demoiselle: what iss the prize of wan leetle kees made in a so lufly tart?" He leaned over the counter, his eyes rolling in a fine frenzy.

Where was Mere Tricot now? What a fine time to brandish her pastry board! Gone to the innermost recesses of the apartment with the rosy baby! Suddenly Judy remembered exactly where she had seen that silly face before.

"At Versailles, the day I got on the wrong train!" flashed through her mind. She remembered well the hateful creature who had sat on the bench by her and insulted her with his attentions. She remembered how she had jumped up from the bench and hurried off, forgetting her package of gingerbread, bought at St. Cloud, and how the would-be masher had run after her with it, saying in his insinuating manner: "You have forgot your _gouter, cherie_. Do you like puddeen very much, my dear?"

It was certainly the same man. His soldier's uniform made him somewhat less of a dandy than his patent leather boots and lemon coloured gloves had done on that occasion, but the dude was there in spite of the change of clothes. On that day at Versailles she had seized the gingerbread and jammed it in her mouth, thereby disgusting the fastidious Frenchman. She had often told the story and her amused hearers had always declared that her presence of mind was much to be commended.

The soldier leaned farther and farther over the counter still demanding: "A leetle kees made in so lufly a tart."

Ha! An inspiration! Judy grasped the desired gooseberry tart and thrust the whole thing into her mouth. There was no time to ask the leave of Mere Tricot.

"_Ah quelle betise!_" exclaimed the dandy, and at the same moment he, too, remembered the young English demoiselle at Versailles. He straightened up and into his ogling eyes came a spark of shame. With a smile that changed his whole countenance he saluted Judy.

"Pardon, Mademoiselle!"

Judy's mouth was too full to attempt French but she managed to say in her mother tongue:

"Why do you come in a respectable place like this and behave just like a Prussian?"

"Prussian! Ah, Mademoiselle, excuse, excuse. I--the beauty of the _boutiquier_ made me forget _la Patrie_. I have been a roue, a fool. I am henceforth a Frenchman. Mademoiselle iss wan n.o.ble ladee. She efen mar her so great beauty to protec her dignitee. I remember ze _pain d'epice_ at Versailles and _la grande bouchee_. Mademoiselle has _le bel esprit_, what you call Mericanhumor. _Au revoir, Mademoiselle_," and with a very humble bow he departed, without buying anything at all.

The Tricots laughed very heartily when Judy told them her experience.

"I see you can take care of yourself," said Pere Tricot with a nod of approval. "If the Prussians come, they had better look out."

"Do you forgive me for eating the last gooseberry tart?" she asked of Mere Tricot. "I was very glad of the excuse to get it before some one bought it from under my very nose."

Mother Tricot not only forgave her but produced another one for her that she had kept back for the guest she seemed to delight to honour.

"Our _boutiquier_ has sold out the shop," declared the old man. "I shall have to go to market very early in the morning to get more provisions cooked."

"Ah, another excuse for absenting thyself!"

"Oh, please, may I go with you?" begged Judy.

"It will mean very early rising, but I shall be so pleased," said the delighted old man, and his wife smiled approval.

It was arranged that Judy was to sleep on a couch in the living room.

This suited her exactly, as she was able after the family had retired to rise stealthily and open a window. The French peasant and even the middle cla.s.s Parisian is as afraid of air in a bedroom as we would be of a rattlesnake. They sleep as a rule in hermetically sealed chambers and there is a superst.i.tion even among the enlightened of that city that night air will give one some peculiar affection of the eyes. How they keep as healthy as they do is a wonder to those brought up on fresh air.

Judy had feared that her sleeping would have to be done in the great bed with Marie and the baby and welcomed the proposition of the couch in the living room with joy. There was a smell of delicatessen wares but it was not unpleasing to one who had been economizing in food for so many days.

"I'd rather smell spinach than American Beauties," she said to herself, "and potato salad beats potpourri."

Her couch was clean and the sheets smelled of lavender. Marie, the little daughter-in-law, had been a _blanchisseuse de fin_ before she became the bride of Jean Tricot. She still plied her trade on the family linen and everything she touched was snow white and beautifully ironed.

The clothes were carried by her to the public laundry; there she washed them and then brought them home to iron.

As Judy lay on the soft, clean couch, sniffing the mingled smells of shop and kitchen and fresh sheets, she thanked her stars that she was not alone in the Bents' studio, wondering what she was to do about breakfast and a little nervous at every sound heard during the night.