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You say the flat is ready. I am coming over at once with baby and Madame Bolivard, who swears she will never leave me. How she is going to get on in London without a word of English, I don't know. I don't mind if I meet Zora. Perhaps it will be better for you that I should. And I think it will be quite safe for me now.
So the quaint quartette started in comfort: Septimus and Emmy and Madame Bolivard and the little lump of mortality which the Frenchwoman carried in her great motherly arms. Madame Bolivard, who had not been out of Paris for twenty years, needed all her maternal instincts to subdue her excitement at the prospect of seeing the open country and the sea.
Emmy had had a good crossing the day before, but Madame Bolivard, who had faced the hitherto unknown perils of the deep with unflinching courage, had been dreadfully seasick. The boy had slept most of the time. Awake he had been as good as gold. "He's the sweetest tempered child under the sun." "Like his father," said Zora, "who is both sweet tempered and a child."
A day also in the woods of Bas Meudon, alone beneath the trees, when they talked like children, and laughed over the luncheon basket which Madame Bolivard had stuffed full of electrifying edibles; when they lay on their backs and looked dreamily at the sky through the leaves, and listened to the chirrup of insects awakening from winter and the strange cracklings and tiny voices of springtide, and gave themselves up to the general vibration of life which accompanies the working of the sap in the trees.
She was bewildered by the storm of words, and could only say, rather stupidly: "Why can't it?" Emmy thew two or three short breaths. The notion had come again. The temptation was irresistible. Zora should know, having brought it on herself. She opened the door. "Madame Bolivard!" she cried. And when the Frenchwoman appeared she pointed to the bassinette. "Take baby into the bedroom.
When Emmy explained that a village on the top of the Pyrenees was not by the seaside, and that neither she nor his aunt, Madame Bolivard, took any interest in the destruction of bears, he retired somewhat crestfallen and went with his difficulties to Angélique, the young lady in the wine shop in the Rue des Francs-Bouchers.
It will be better for him there." "Bien, madame," said Madame Bolivard, taking up the child. And when the door had closed behind her Emmy pointed to it and said: "That's why." Zora started forward, horror stricken. "Emmy, what do you mean?" "I'll tell you. I couldn't with him in the room. I should always fancy that he had heard me, and I want him to respect and love his mother."
I make a rule never to lend umbrellas, so I give you this from a grateful heart. God bless you." The little flat in Chelsea, cleaned, swept and garnished by the wife of the porter of the Mansions, received Emmy, her babe, Madame Bolivard and multitudinous luggage.
"But how will you ask for directions? You know you can't say 'Ecclefechan Mansions." Madame Bolivard made a hopeless, spluttering sound as if she were blowing teeth out of her mouth, which in no wise resembled the name of the place wherein she dwelt.
When Madame Bolivard appeared with bonnet and basket undismayedly prepared to market for lunch and dinner, she laughed like a schoolgirl, and made her repeat the list of English words she had taught her in view of this contingency. She could say "cabbage," "sugar," "lettuce," and ask for all sorts of things. "But suppose you lose your way, Madame Bolivard?" "I shall find it, madame."
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