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Updated: June 13, 2025
Then Mme Maloir, who was counting the tricks she had won with her tens and aces, said cheeringly to her in her soft voice: "It would be better, dearie, to give up your expedition at once." "No, be quick about it," said Mme Lerat, shuffling the cards. "I shall take the half-past four o'clock train if you're back here with the money before four o'clock."
And her mistress continuing to question her with her eyes, she added simply: "I've seen him somewhere." This remark seemed to decide the young woman. Regretfully she left the kitchen, that asylum of steaming warmth, where you could talk and take your ease amid the pleasant fumes of the coffeepot which was being kept warm over a handful of glowing embers. She left Mme Maloir behind her.
Mme Maloir was for finishing the game, but Zoe looked as if she was going to pounce down on the cards, and so she decided to carry them off without in any way altering their positions, while Mme Lerat undertook the removal of the brandy bottle, the glasses and the sugar.
"I've put HIM in the little sitting room." Thereupon Mme Maloir spoke about the banker to Mme Lerat, who knew no such gentleman. Was he getting ready to give Rose Mignon the go-by? Zoe shook her head; she knew a thing or two. But once more she had to go and open the door. "Here's bothers!" she murmured when she came back. "It's the nigger!
She was dirty; she was stupid; she had knocked about in all sorts of low places! After that he waxed frantic over the money question. Did he spend six francs when he dined out? No, somebody was treating him to a dinner; otherwise he would have eaten his ordinary meal at home. And to think of spending them on that old procuress of a Maloir, a jade he would chuck out of the house tomorrow!
Zoe alone kept her place; she always looked clean, and her only anxiety was how to organize this riot until she had got enough together to set up on her own account in fulfillment of a plan she had been hatching for some time past. These, again, were only the anxieties he could own to. The count put up with the stupidity of Mme Maloir, playing bezique with her in spite of her musty smell.
Mme Maloir herself wrote in her bold English hand, "My darling little man," and then she told him not to come tomorrow because "that could not be" but hastened to add that "she was with him in thought at every moment of the day, whether she were near or far away." "And I end with 'a thousand kisses," she murmured. Mme Lerat had shown her approval of each phrase with an emphatic nod.
"While waiting for you to return we'll play a game of bezique," said Mme Maloir after a short silence. "Does Madame play bezique?" Certainly Mme Lerat played it, and that to perfection. It was no good troubling Zoe, who had vanished a corner of the table would do quite well. And they pushed back the tablecloth over the dirty plates.
Then they both scudded to the kitchen, where they installed themselves at the table in an empty space between the dishcloths, which were spread out to dry, and the bowl still full of dishwater. "We said it was three hundred and forty. It's your turn." "I play hearts." When Zoe returned she found them once again absorbed. After a silence, as Mme Lerat was shuffling, Mme Maloir asked who it was.
Only, as she dreaded a scene, she crossed the kitchen and made her escape by the back stairs. She often went that way and in return had only to lift up her flounces. "When one is a good mother anything's excusable," said Mme Maloir sententiously when left alone with Mme Lerat. "Four kings," replied this lady, whom the play greatly excited. And they both plunged into an interminable game.
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