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And then dear Mama went, and I stepped into her place with P'pa. He wasn't exactly an invalid, but he did like to be fussed over, to have his meals cooked by my own hands, even if we were in a hotel. And whist dear me, how I used to dread those three rubbers every evening! I was only a young woman then, and I suppose I was attractive to other men, but I never forgot Mr. Totter.
I'm sure I don't know what they've been doing, but I know I get less money all the time! It's the New Haven, George, that P'pa left me two years ago. I can't understand anything about it, but yesterday I was talking to a young man who advised me to put all my money into some tonic stock. It's a tonic made just of plain earth he says it makes everything grow. Doesn't it sound reasonable?
But you have made a contented and a womanly life for yourself, and, as a matter of fact, there always has been a man to stand between you and the struggle!" he said. "I know. First P'pa, and now you!" Emelene mused happily. "I wasn't thinking of myself. I was thinking that your father left you a comfortable income!" he said quickly.
"Have you no mother?" asked Madame de Montcornet, unable otherwise to explain the child's nakedness. "No, ma'am; m'ma died of grief for losing p'pa, who went to the army in 1812 without marrying her with papers, and got frozen, saving your presence. But I've my Grandpa Fourchon, who is a good man, though he does beat me bad sometimes."
"P'pa," cried a voice, "he is not in here." He recognized the voice of the eldest daughter. "Did you go in?" demanded her father. "No," replied the girl, "but as his key is in the door, he must be out." The father exclaimed: "Go in, nevertheless." The door opened, and Marius saw the tall Jondrette come in with a candle in her hand.
"P'pa always said," Emelene quoted, "that if a woman looked about for a man to advise her, she'd find him! And as I sit here now, in this lovely home, I think isn't it sweeter and wiser and better this way? For a while, because I was a hot-headed, rebellious girl! I couldn't see that he was right. I had had a disappointment, you know," she went on, her kind, mild eyes watering.
Hautot returned: "It has done for me! My stomach is split! I know it well." Then, all of a sudden: "I want to talk to the son, if I have the time." Hautot Junior, in spite of himself, shed tears, and kept repeating like a little boy. "P'pa, p'pa, poor p'ps!" But the father, in a firmer tone: "Come! stop crying this is not the time for it. I have to talk to you. Sit down there quite close to me.
She moved a shining pot forward on a shining stove, she took plates of inviting cold things from the safe, and lifted a damp napkin from her pats of butter. Then she said, in an uninterested voice: "You might tell your p'pa, Miss Lydia " Humble as her business was, she had been taught it well. Martie, insatiable on this particular topic, sometimes questioned Pauline.
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