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By Root 1413 0

v She was just then talking with a messenger from the theatre who had brought madame a communication from the stage-manager, which should have been sent to her in the morning. Nana had the man in, and asked him to leave the letter at Daguenet’s on his way back. Then she began to question him. Oh! M. Bordenave was very pleased; all the seats were booked for a week at least; madame had no idea of the number of persons who had inquired for her address since the morning. When the messenger had left, Nana said that she would not be away more than half an hour at the most. If any visitors called, Zoé was to ask them to wait. As she spoke, the electric bell of the outer door sounded. It was one of the creditors, the job-master; he had taken a seat on the bench of the anteroom. Oh! he might wait and twirl his thumbs until night-time; they were not going to disturb themselves for him.

“I must pull myself together,” said Nana lazily, again stretching herself and yawning. “I ought to be there by now.”

All the same she did not move. She watched the game, in which her aunt had just scored a hundred aces. Her chin in her hand, she was becoming interested; but she suddenly started on hearing three o’lock strike.

“Damn it!” she roughly exclaimed.

Then Madame Maloir, who was counting the tens, said to her in a gentle, encouraging voice, “My child, you would do better to get your business over at once.”

“Yes, be quick over it,” added Madame Lerat, as she shuffled the cards. “I shall be able to leave by the half-past four train, if you are here with the money by four o’lock.”

“Oh! it won’t take long,” she muttered in reply.

In ten minutes Zoé had helped her to put on a dress and bonnet. She didn’t care if she looked untidy. Just as she was about to go off, there was another ring at the bell. This time it was the coal merchant. Well! he could keep the job-master company; they might entertain each other. To avoid a row, however, she passed through the kitchen, and went out by the servants’ staircase. She often went that way; all she had to do was to keep her skirts from touching the ground.

“When one is a good mother, the rest is of no consequence,” sententiously observed Madame Maloir, now left alone with Madame Lerat.

“I mark eighty kings,” replied the latter, who had a great weakness for cards. And they both became more and more wrapped up in the game.

The table had not been cleared. A mixed odour pervaded the room—the fumes of the lunch and the smoke of the cigarettes. The two ladies returned to their lumps of sugar soaked in coffee. For twenty minutes they played as they sipped, when, the bell having rung a third time, Zoé bounced into the room, and jostled them in a most familiar manner.

“I say!” she exclaimed, “there’s another ring. You won’t be able to remain in here. If many more people are coming, I shall want every room in the place. Now, then, up you get! up you get!”

Madame Maloir wanted to finish the game; but Zoé having made a feint of gathering up the cards, she decided to remove them carefully, without disturbing anything, whilst Madame Lerat secured the brandy bottle, some glasses, and the sugar, and they both hastened into the kitchen, where they placed their things on an end of the table between some dirty cloths that were drying and a large bowl full of greasy water.

“I’m three hundred and forty. It’s your play.”

“I lead hearts.”

When Zoé returned, she found them once more deep in the game. After a short silence, and as Madame Lerat gathered up the cards and shuffled them, Madame Maloir asked:

“Who was it?”

“Oh! no one,” answered the maid, carelessly, “only a youngster. I ought to have sent him about his business; but he is so pretty, without a hair on his face, and with blue eyes and such a girlish figure, that I told him he could wait. He has an enormous bouquet in his hand, and he won’t leave go of it. He deserves to be whipped, a brat who ought still to be at college!”

Madame Lerat got up to fetch hot water to concoct some grog; the sugar and coffee had made her thirsty. Zoé murmured that, all the same,