Our House Part 3

A wonderful week followed. From the start we could not resist her charm, though to be on such terms with one's servant as to know that she has charm, is no doubt the worst possible kind of bad form. Even William Penn, the fastidious, was her slave at first sight,--and it would have been rank ingrat.i.tude if he had not been, for, from the ordinary London tabby average people saw in him, he was at once transformed into the most superb, the most magnificent of cats! And we were all superb, we were all magnificent, down to the snuffy, tattered old Irish charwoman who came to make us untidy three times a week, and whom we had not the heart to turn out, because we knew that if we did, there could be no one else foolish enough to take her in again.

And Louise, though her southern imagination did such great things for us, had not overrated herself. She might be always laughing at everything, as they always do laugh "down there,"--at the English she couldn't understand, at _Mize Boum_, the nearest she came to the charwoman's name, at the fog she must have hated, at the dirt left for her to clean. But she worked harder than any servant I have ever had, and to better purpose. She adored the cleanliness and the order, it seemed, and was appalled at the dirt and slovenliness of the English, as every Frenchwoman is when she comes to the land that has not ceased to brag of its cleanliness since its own astonished discovery of the morning tub. Before Louise, the London blacks disappeared as if by magic. Our wardrobes were overhauled and set to rights. The linen was mended and put in place. And she could cook! Such _risotto_!--she had been in Italy--Such _macaroni_! Such _bouillabaisse_! Throughout that wonderful week, our chambers smelt as strong of _ail_ as a Provencal kitchen.

In the face of all this, I do not see how I brought myself to find any fault. To do myself justice, I never did when it was a question of the usual domestic conventions. Louise was better than all the conventions--all the prim English maids in prim white caps--in the world. Just to hear her talk, just to have her call that disreputable old _Mize Boum ma belle_, just to have her announce as _La Dame de la bouillabaisse_ a friend of ours who had been to Provence and had come to feast on her masterpiece and praised her for it,--just each and every one of her charming southern ways made up for the worst domestic crime she could have committed, I admit to a spasm of dismay when, for the first meal she served, she appeared in her petticoat, a dish-cloth for ap.r.o.n, and her sleeves rolled up above her elbows. But I forgot it with her delightful laugh at herself when I explained that, absurdly it might be, we preferred a skirt, an ap.r.o.n, and sleeves fastened at the wrists.

It seemed she adored the economy too, and she had wished to protect her dress and even her ap.r.o.n.

These things would horrify the model housewife; but then, I am not a model housewife, and they amused me, especially as she was so quick to meet me, not only half, but the whole way. When, however, she took to running out at intervals on mysterious errands, I felt that I must object. Her first excuse was _les affaires_; her next, a friend; and, when neither of these would serve, she owned up to a husband who, apparently, spent his time waiting for her at the street corner; he was so lonely, _le pauvre_! I suggested that he should come and see her in the kitchen. She laughed outright. Why, he was of a shyness _Madame_ could not figure to herself. He never would dare to mount the stairs and ring the front door-bell.

In the course of this wonderful week, there was sent to me, from the Soho _Bureau_, a Swiss girl with as many references as a Colonial Dame has grandfathers. Even so, and despite the inconvenient husband, I might not have dismissed Louise,--it was so pleasant to live in an atmosphere of superlatives and _ail_. It was she who settled the matter with some vague story of a partnership in a restaurant and work waiting for her there. Perhaps we should have parted with an affectation of indifference had not J. unexpectedly interfered. Husbands have a trick of pretending superiority to details of housekeeping until you have had all the bother, and then upsetting everything by their interference. She had given us the sort of time we hadn't had since the old days in Provence, he argued; her smile alone was worth double the money agreed upon; therefore, double the money was the least I could in decency offer her.

His logic was irreproachable, but housekeeping on such principles would end in domestic bankruptcy. However, Louise got the money, and my reward was her face when she thanked me--she made giving sheer self-indulgence--and the _risotto_ which, in the shock of grat.i.tude, she insisted upon coming the next day to cook for us.

But, in the end, J.'s indiscretion cost me dear. As Louise was determined to magnify all our geese, not merely into swans, but into the most superb, the most magnificent swans, the few extra shillings had multiplied so miraculously by the time their fame reached the _Quartier_, that _Madame_ of the _Bureau_ saw in me a special Providence appointed to relieve her financial difficulties, and hurried to claim an immediate loan. Then, her claim being disregarded, she wrote to call my attention to the pa.s.sing of the days and the miserable pettiness of the sum demanded, and to a.s.sure me of her consideration the most perfect.

She got to be an intolerable nuisance before I heard the last of her.

We had not realized the delight of having Louise to take care of us, until she was replaced by the Swiss girl, who was industrious, sober, well-trained, with all the stolidity and surliness of her people, and as colourless as a self-respecting servant ought to be. I was immensely relieved when, after a fortnight, she found the work too much for her.

It was just as she was on the point of going that Louise reappeared, her face still white with powder, the sham diamonds still glittering in her ears, but somehow changed, I could not quite make out how. She had come, she explained to present me with a ring of pearls and opals and of surpa.s.sing beauty, at the moment p.a.w.ned for a mere trifle,--here was the ticket; I had but to pay, add a smaller trifle for interest and commission, and it was mine. As I never have worn rings I did not care to begin the habit by gambling in p.a.w.n tickets, much though I should have liked to oblige Louise. Her emotion when I refused seemed so out of proportion, and yet was so unmistakably genuine, that it bewildered me.

But she pulled herself together almost at once and began to talk of the restaurant which, I learned, was marching in a simply marvellous manner.

It was only when, in answer to her question, I told her that the _Demoiselle Suisse_ was marching not at all and was about to leave me, that the truth came out. There was no restaurant, there never had been,--except in the country of Tartarin's lions; it was her invention to spare me any self-reproach I might have felt for turning her adrift at the end of her week's engagement. She had found no work since. She and her husband had p.a.w.ned everything. _Tiens_, and she emptied before me a pocketful of p.a.w.n tickets. They were without a sou. They had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. That was the change. I began to understand. She was starving, literally starving, in the cold and gloom and damp of the London winter, she who was used to the warmth and sunshine, to the clear blue skies of Provence. If the aliens who drift to England, as to the Promised Land, could but know what awaited them!

Of course I took her back. She might have added rouge to the powder, she might have glittered all over with diamonds, sham or real, and I would not have minded. J. welcomed her with joy. William Penn hung rapturously at her heels. We had a _risotto_, golden as the sun of the _Midi_, fragrant as its kitchens, for our dinner.

There was no question of a week now, no question of time at all. It did not seem as if we ever could manage again, as if we ever could have managed, without Louise. And she, on her side, took possession of our chambers, and, for a ridiculously small sum a week, worked her miracles for us. We positively shone with cleanliness; London grime no longer lurked, the skeleton in our cupboards. We never ate dinners and breakfasts more to our liking, never had I been so free from housekeeping, never had my weekly bills been so small. Eventually, she charged herself with the marketing, though she could not, and never could, learn to speak a word of English; but not even the London tradesman was proof against her smile. She kept the weekly accounts, though she could neither read nor write: in her intelligence, an eloquent witness to the folly of general education. She was, in a word, the most capable and intelligent woman I have ever met, so that it was the more astounding that she should also be the most charming.

Most astounding of all was the way, entirely, typically Provencale as she was, she could adapt herself to London and its life and people.

Though she wore in the street an ordinary felt hat, and in the house the English ap.r.o.n, you could see that her hair was made for the pretty Provencal ribbon, and her broad shoulders for the Provencal fichu. _Te_, _ve_, and _au mouins_ were as constantly in her mouth as in Tartarin's.

Provencal proverbs forever hovered on her lips. She sang Provencal songs at her work. She had ready a Provencal story for every occasion. Her very adjectives were Mistral's, her very exaggerations Daudet's. And yet she did everything as if she had been a "general" in London chambers all her life. Nothing came amiss to her. After her first startling appearance as waitress, it was no time before she was serving at table as if she had been born to it, and with such a grace of her own that every dish she offered seemed a personal tribute. People who had never seen her before would smile back involuntarily as they helped themselves. It was the same no matter what she did. She was always gay, however heavy her task. To her even London, with its fogs, was a _galejado_, as they say "down there." And she was so appreciative. We would make excuses to give her things for the pleasure of watching the warm glow spread over her face and the light leap to her eyes. We would send her to the theatre for the delight of having her come back and tell us about it. All the world, on and off the stage, was exalted and transfigured as she saw it.

But frank as she was in her admiration of all the world, she remained curiously reticent about herself. "My poor grandmother used to say, you must turn your tongue seven times in your mouth before speaking," she said to me once; and I used to fancy she gave hers a few extra twists when it came to talking of her own affairs. Some few facts I gathered: that she had been at one time an _ouvreuse_ in a Ma.r.s.eilles theatre; at another, a tailoress,--how accomplished, the smart appearance of her husband in J.'s old coats and trousers was to show us; and that, always, off and on, she had made a business of buying at the periodical sales of the _Mont de Piete_ and selling at private sales of her own. I gathered also that they all knew her in Ma.r.s.eilles; it was Louise here, Louise there, as she pa.s.sed through the market, and everybody must have a word and a laugh with her. No wonder! You couldn't have a word and a laugh once with Louise and not long to repeat the experience. But to her life when the hours of work were over, she offered next to no clue.

Only one or two figures flitted, pale shadows, through her rare reminiscences. One was the old grandmother, whose sayings were full of wisdom, but who seemed to have done little for her save give her, fortunately, no schooling at all, and a religious education that bore the most surprising fruit. Louise had made her first communion, she had walked in procession on feast days. _J'adorais ca_, she would tell me, as she recalled her long white veil and the taper in her hand. But she adored every bit as much going to the Salvation Army meetings,--the la.s.sies would invite her in, and lend her a hymn-book, and she would sing as hard as ever she could, was her account. Her ideas on the subject of the Scriptures and the relations of the Holy Family left me gasping. But her creed had the merit of simplicity. The _Boun Diou_ was intelligent, she maintained; _il aime les gens honnetes_. He would not ask her to hurry off to church and leave all in disorder at home, and waste her time. If she needed to pray, she knelt down where and as she was, and the _Boun Diou_ was as well pleased. He was a man like us, wasn't He? Well then, He understood.

There was also a sister. She occupied a modest apartment in Ma.r.s.eilles when she first dawned upon our horizon, but so rapidly did it expand into a palatial house in town and a palatial villa by the sea, both with cellars of rare and exquisite vintages and stables full of horses and carriages, that we looked confidently to the fast-approaching day when we should find her installed in the Elysee at Paris. Only in one respect did she never vary by a hair's breadth: this was her hatred of Louise's husband.

Here, at all events, was a member of the family about whom we learned more than we cared to know. For if he did not show himself at first, that did not mean his willingness to let us ignore him. He persisted in wanting Louise to meet him at the corner, sometimes just when I most wanted her in the kitchen. He would have her come back to him at night; and to see her, after her day's hard work, start out in the black sodden streets, seldom earlier than ten, often as late as midnight; to realize that she must start back long before the sun would have thought of coming up, if the sun ever did come up on a London winter morning, made us wretchedly uncomfortable. The husband, however, was not to be moved by any messages I might send him. He was too shy to grant the interview I asked. But he gave me to understand through her that he wouldn't do without her, he would rather starve, he couldn't get along without her.

We did not blame him: we couldn't, either. That was why, after several weeks of discomfort to all concerned, it occurred to us that we might invite him to make our home his; and we were charmed by his condescension when, at last conquering his shyness, he accepted our invitation. The threatened deadlock was thus settled, and M. Auguste, as he introduced himself, came to us as a guest for as long as he chose to stay. There were friends--there always are--to warn us that what we were doing was sheer madness. What did we know about him, anyway?

Precious little, it was a fact: that he was the husband of Louise, neither more nor less. We did not even know that, it was hinted. But if Louise had not asked for our marriage certificate, could we insist upon her producing hers?

It may have been mad, but it worked excellently. M. Auguste as a guest was the pattern of discretion. I had never had so much as a glimpse of him until he came to visit us. Then I found him a good-looking man, evidently a few years younger than Louise, well-built, rather taller than the average Frenchman. Beyond this, it was weeks before I knew anything of him except the astonishing adroitness with which he kept out of our way. He quickly learned our hours and arranged his accordingly.

After we had begun work in the morning, he would saunter down to the kitchen and have his coffee, the one person of leisure in the establishment. After that, and again in the afternoon, he would stroll out to attend to what I take were the not too arduous duties of a horse-dealer with neither horses nor capital,--for as a horse-dealer he described himself when he had got so far as to describe himself at all.

At noon and at dinner-time, he would return from Tattersall's, or wherever his not too exhausting business had called him, with a small paper parcel supposed to contain his breakfast or his dinner, our agreement being that he was to supply his own food. The evenings he spent with Louise. I could discover no vice in him except the, to us, disturbing excess of his devotion to her. You read of this sort of devotion in French novels and do not believe in it. But M. Auguste, in his exacting dependence on Louise, left the French novel far behind. As for Louise, though she was no longer young and beauty fades early in the South, I have never met, in or out of books, a woman who made me understand so well the reason of the selfishness some men call love.

M. Auguste's manners to us were irreproachable. We could only admire the consideration he showed in so persistently effacing himself. J.

never would have seen him, if on feast days--Christmas, New Year's, the 14th of July--M. Auguste had not, with great ceremony, entered the dining-room at the hour of morning coffee to shake hands and wish J. the compliments of the season. With me his relations grew less formal, for he was not slow to discover that we had one pleasant weakness in common.

Though the modest proportions of that brown-paper parcel might not suggest it, M. Auguste knew and liked what was good to eat; so did I.

Almost before I realized it, he had fallen into the habit of preparing some special dish for me, or of making my coffee, when I chanced to be alone for lunch or for dinner. I can still see the gleam in his eyes as he brought me in my cup, and a.s.sured me that he, not Louise, was the artist, and that it was something of extra--but of extra!--as it always was. Nor was it long before he was installed _chef_ in our kitchen on the occasion of any little breakfast or dinner we might be giving. The first time I caught him in shirt-sleeves, with Louise's ap.r.o.n flapping about his legs and the bib drawn over his waistcoat, he was inclined to be apologetic. But he soon gave up apology. It was evident there were few things he enjoyed more than cooking a good dinner,--unless it was eating it,--and his ap.r.o.n was put on early in the day. In the end, I never asked any one to breakfast or dinner without consulting him, and his _menus_ strengthened the friendliness of our relations.

After a while he ran my errands and helped Louise to market. I found that he spoke and wrote very good English, and was a man of some education. I have preserved his daily accounts, written in an unusually neat handwriting, always beginning "Mussy: 1 penny"; and this reminds me that not least in his favour was his success in ingratiating himself with William Penn,--or "Mussy" in Louise's one heroic attempt to cope with the English. M. Auguste, moreover, was quiet and reserved to a degree that would not have discredited the traditional Englishman. Only now and then did the _Midi_ show itself in him: in the gleam of his eye over his gastronomic masterpieces; in his pose as horse-dealer and the scale on which the business he never did was schemed,--_Mademoiselle_, the French dressmaker from Versailles, who counted in tens and thought herself rich, was dazzled by the way M. Auguste reckoned by thousands; and once, luckily only once, in a frenzied outbreak of pa.s.sion.

He was called to Paris, I never understood why. When the day came, he was seized with such despair as I had never seen before, as I trust I may never have to see again. He could not leave Louise, he would not.

No! No! No! He raved, he swore, he wept. I was terrified, but Louise, when I called her aside to consult her, shrugged her shoulders. "We play the comedy in the kitchen," she laughed, but I noticed that her laughter was low. I fancy when you played the comedy with M. Auguste, tragedy was only just round the corner. With the help of _Mademoiselle_ she got him to the station; he had wanted to throw himself from the train as it started, was her report. And in three days, not a penny the richer for the journey, he had returned to his life of ease in our chambers.

Thus we came to know M. Auguste's virtues and something of his temper, but never M. Auguste himself. The months pa.s.sed, and we were still conscious of mystery. I did not inspire him with the healthy fear he entertained for J., but I cannot say he ever took me into his confidence. What he was when not in our chambers; what he had been before he moved into them; what turn of fate had stranded him, penniless, in London with Louise, to make us the richer for his coming; why he, a man of education, was married to a woman of none; why he was M. Auguste while Louise was Louise Sorel--I knew as little the day he left us as the day he arrived. J. instinctively distrusted him, convinced that he had committed some monstrous crime and was in hiding.

This was also the opinion of the French Quarter, as I learned afterwards. It seems the _Quartier_ held its breath when it heard he was our guest, and waited for the worst, only uncertain what form that worst would take,--whether we should be a.s.sa.s.sinated in our beds, or a bonfire made of our chambers. M. Auguste, however, spared us and disappointed the _Quartier_. His crime, to the end, remained as baffling as the ident.i.ty of the Man in the Iron Mask, or the secret of Kaspar Hauser.

That he was honest, I would wager my own reputation for honesty, even if it was curious the way his fingers gradually covered themselves with rings, a watch-chain dangled from his waistcoat pocket, a pin was stuck jauntily in his necktie. Her last purchases at the _Mont de Piete_, p.a.w.ned during those first weeks of starving in London and gradually redeemed, was Louise's explanation; and why should we have suspected M.

Auguste of coming by them unlawfully when he never attempted to rob us, though we gave him every opportunity? He knew where I kept my money and my keys. He was alone with Louise in our chambers, not only many a day and evening, but once for a long summer.

We had to cycle down into Italy and William Penn could not be left to care for himself, nor could we board him out without risking the individuality of a cat who had never seen the world except from the top of a four-story house. Louise and M. Auguste, therefore, were retained to look after him, which, I should add, they did in a manner as satisfactory to William as to ourselves. Every week I received a report of his health and appet.i.te from M. Auguste, in whom I discovered a new and delightful talent as correspondent. "_Depuis votre depart_," said the first, "_cette pauvre bete a miaule apres vous tous les jours, et il est constamment a la porte pour voir si vous ne venez pas. Il ne commence vraiment a en prendre son parti que depuis hier. Mais tous ces soucis de chat_ [for that charming phrase what would one not have forgiven M. Auguste?], _mais tous ces soucis de chat ne l'empechent pas de bien boire son lait le matin et manger sa viande deux fois par jour._" Nor was it all colour of rose to be in charge of William.

"_Figurez-vous_," the next report ran, "_que Mussy a devore et abime completement une paire de bas tout neufs que Louise s'est achetee hier.

C'est un vrai pet.i.t diable, mais il est si gentil qu'on ne peut vraiment pas le gronder pour cela._" It was consoling to hear eventually that William had returned to normal pursuits. "_Mussy est bien sage, il a attrape une souris hier dans la cuisine--je crois bien que Madame ne trouvera jamais un aussi gentil Mussy._" And so the journal of William's movements was continued throughout our absence. When, leaving J. in Italy, I returned to London,--met at midnight at the station by M.

Auguste with flattering enthusiasm,--Mussy's condition and behaviour corroborated the weekly bulletins. And not only this. Our chambers were as clean as the proverbial new pin: everything was in its place; not so much as a sc.r.a.p of paper was missing. The only thing that had disappeared was the sprinkling of gray in Louise's hair, and for this M.

Auguste volubly prepared me during our walk from the station; she had dyed it with almost unforeseen success, he told me, so triumphantly that I put down the bottle of dye to his extravagance.

If I know M. Auguste was not a thief, I do not think he was a murderer.

How could I see blood on the hands of the man who presided so joyously over my pots and pans? If he were a forger, my trust in him never led to abuse of my cheque book; if a deserter, how came he to be possessed of his _livret militaire_ duly signed, as my own eyes are the witness?

how could he venture back to France, as I know he did for I received from him letters with the Paris postmark? An anarchist, J. was inclined to believe. But I could not imagine him dabbling in bombs and fuses. To be a horse-dealer, without horses or money, was much more in his line.

Only of one thing were we sure: however hideous or horrible the evil, M.

Auguste had worked "down there," under the hot sun of Provence, Louise had no part in it. She knew--it was the reason of her curious reticences, of her sacrifice of herself to him. That he loved her was inevitable. Who could help loving her? She was so intelligent, so graceful, so gay. But that she should love M. Auguste would have been incomprehensible, were it not in the nature of woman to love the man who is most selfish in his dependence upon her. She did all the work, and he had all the pleasure of it. He was always decently dressed, there was always money in his pocket, though she, who earned it, never had a penny to spend on herself. No matter how busy and hurried she might be, she had always the leisure to talk to him, to amuse him when he came in, always the courage to laugh, like the little Fleurance in the story.

What would you? She was made like that. She had always laughed, when she was sad as when she was gay. And while she was making life delightful for him, she was doing for us what three Englishwomen combined could not have done so well, and with a charm that all the Englishwomen in the world could not have mustered among them.

She had been with us about a year when I began to notice that, at moments, her face was clouded and her smile less ready. At first, I put it down to her endless comedy with M. Auguste. But, after a bit, it looked as if the trouble were more serious even than his histrionics. It was nothing, she laughed when I spoke to her; it would pa.s.s. And she went on amusing and providing for M. Auguste and working for us. But by the time the dark days of November set in, we were more worried about her than ever. The crisis came with Christmas.

On Christmas Day, friends were to dine with us, and we invited _Mademoiselle_, the French dressmaker, to eat her Christmas dinner with Louise and M. Auguste. We were very staid in the dining-room,--it turned out rather a dull affair. But in the kitchen it was an uproarious feast.

Though she lived some distance away, though on Christmas night London omnibuses are few and far between, _Mademoiselle_ could hardly be persuaded to go home, so much was she enjoying herself. Louise was all laughter. "You have been amused?" I asked, when _Mademoiselle_, finally and reluctantly, had been bundled off by J. in a hansom.

"_Mais oui, mais oui_," M. Auguste cried, pleasure in his voice. "_Cette pauvre Mademoiselle!_ Her life, it is so sad, she is so alone. It is good for her to be amused. We have told her many stories,--_et des histoires un tout pet.i.t peu salees, n'est-ce pas? pour egayer cette pauvre Mademoiselle?_"

It was the day after the feast that Louise had to give in. She confessed she had been in torture while she served our dinner and _Mademoiselle_ was there. She could hardly eat or drink. But why make it sad for all the world because she was in pain? and she had laughed, she had laughed!

We scolded her first. Then we sent her to a good doctor. It was worse than we feared. The trouble was grave, there must be an operation without delay. The big tears rolled down her cheeks as she said it. She looked old and broken. Why, she moaned, should this sorrow come to her?

She had never done any harm to any one: why should she have to suffer?

Why, indeed? Her mistake had been to do too little harm, too much good, to others, to think too little of herself. Now, she had to pay for it as one almost always does pay for one's good deeds. She worried far less over the pain she must bear than over the inconvenience to M. Auguste when she could no longer earn money for him.

We wanted her to go into one of the London hospitals. We offered to take a room for her where she could stay after the operation until she got back her strength. But we must not think her ungrateful, the mere idea of a hospital made her desperate. And what would she do in a room _avec un homme comme ca_. Besides, there was the sister in Ma.r.s.eilles, and, in the hour of her distress, her sister's horses and carriages multiplied like the miraculous loaves and fishes, the vintages in the cellar doubled in age and strength. And she was going to die; it was queer, but one knew those things; and she longed to die _la-bas_, where there was a sun and the sky was blue, where she was at home. We knew she had not a penny for the journey. M. Auguste had seen to that. Naturally, J. gave her the money. He would not have had a moment's comfort if he had not,--the drain upon your own emotions is part of the penalty you pay for having a human being and not a machine to work for you,--and he added a little more to keep her from want on her arrival in Ma.r.s.eilles, in case the sister had vanished or the sister's fortunes had dwindled to their original proportions. He exacted but one condition: M. Auguste was not to know there was more than enough for the journey.

Louise's last days with us were pa.s.sed in tears,--poor Louise! who until now had laughed at fate. It was at this juncture that M. Auguste came out strong. I could not have believed he had it in him. He no longer spent his time dodging J. and dealing in visionary horses. He took Louise's place boldly. He made the beds, cooked all our meals, waited on us, dusted, opened the door, while Louise sat, melancholy and forlorn, in front of the kitchen fire. On the last day of all--she was not to start until the afternoon Continental train--she drew me mysteriously into the dining-room, she shut the door with every precaution, she showed me where she had sewed the extra sovereigns in her stays. M.

Auguste should never know. "_Je pars pour mon long voyage_," she repeated. "_J'ai mes pressentiments._" And she was going to ask them to let her wear a black skirt I had given her, and an old coat of J.'s she had turned into a bodice, when the time came to lay her in her coffin.

Thus something of ours would go with her on the long journey. How could she forget us? How could we forget her? she might better have asked. I made a thousand excuses to leave her; Louise playing "the comedy" had never been so tragic as Louise in tears. But she would have me back again, and again, and again, to tell me how happy she had been with us.

"Why, I was at home," she said, her surprise not yet outworn. "_J'etais chez moi, et j'etais si tranquille._ I went. I came. _Monsieur_ entered.

He called me. '_Louise._'--'_Oui, Monsieur._'--'_Voulez-vous faire ceci ou cela?_'--'_Mais oui, Monsieur, de suite._' And I would do it and _Monsieur_ would say, '_Merci, Louise_,' and he would go. And me, I would run quick to the kitchen or upstairs to finish my work. _J'etais si tranquille!_"

The simplicity of the memories she treasured made her story of them pitiful as I listened. How little peace had fallen to her lot, that she should prize the quiet and homeliness of her duties in our chambers!

At last it was time to go. She kissed me on both cheeks. She gave J. one look, then she flung herself into his arms and kissed him too on both cheeks. She almost strangled William Penn. She sobbed so, she couldn't speak. She clutched and kissed us again. She ran out of the door and we heard her sobbing down the three flights of stairs into the street. J.

hurried into his workroom. I went back to my desk. I don't think we could have spoken either.