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Updated: May 31, 2025
It did not in the least matter about shoes, when it was summer: when the road was hot, one walked in the cool grass at the side; when there was no grass eh, one waited till one came to some. They were only for state, these shoes. They were stiff and hard, and the heel-places hurt: it was different for La Patronne, who wore stockings under hers. But here were the houses, and it was time to play.
Le Gros lifted his sullen face as I entered, shifted his elbows, gripped the clean marble slab of his table with both his red hands, and with a shrewd glint from his small, cruel eyes, looked up and grunted. "Ah! bonjour, monsieur." "Bonjour, Monsieur Le Gros," I replied. "We seem to be the only ones here. Where's the patronne?"
"And my arrival has altered it?" "Oh we took that into account!" Mrs. Beale was flushed, which was never quite becoming to her, and her face visibly testified to the encounter to which she alluded. Evidently, however, she had not been worsted, and she held up her head and smiled and rubbed her hands as if in sudden emulation of the patronne. "She promised she'd stay even if you should come."
But Marie knew all about the things that children think. What was she but a child herself? she had little knowledge of grown persons, and regarded them all as ogres, more or less, except Old Billy, and La Patronne, who really meant to be kind. "Come, lit' girl!" she said in her clear soft voice. "Come and dance! for you I play, for you I sing too, if you will.
Mother, like a frigate coming to anchor with a favourable wind, sailed into her chair; and behind her stumbled Daddy, looking absent-minded and pre- occupied. Money was uncommonly scarce just then the usual Bourcelles complaint. Conversation in many tongues, unmusically high-pitched, then at once broke loose, led ever by la patronne at the head of the table.
Yvonne, so the patronne informed her, had taken the baby to the dunes, and thither Milly, without stopping to change her dusty dress, set out to find her. She descried her little Brittany maid on the sands safely above tide-water, and by her side a small white bundle that made Milly's heart beat faster.
La Patronne, the wife of Le Boss, who was like a barrel, but not bad, when she could see through the fat, not bad in every way; and there was Old Billy, who took care of the horses and dogs, and he was her friend, and she loved him, and he had always the good word for her even when he was very drunk, too drunk to speak to any one else.
A crowd of women and children soon surrounded them, and the sounds of the drum brought the curious from the fields and more distant houses. The patronne came out and Philidor offered to do her portrait for ten sous. They were lucky. When the hat was passed they found the total returns upon their venture, including the portrait, were one franc and thirty centimes.
In the courtyard he patted the dog and lifted the patron's son on to his shoulder, then he asked the patronne if the cook had a name and whether he might some day come and watch her churn butter. In the dining room he praised the coffee, and admired the geraniums. St. Jean-les-Flots must have a particularly fine soil for geraniums, and what air! Why, he felt a different man already.
Ah, no more would he swear at Marie because people did not always give money, being perhaps poor themselves, or unwilling to give to so ugly a face as his girl's, who carried round the dish. No more! And La Patronne would be sorry perhaps a little, she had the good heart, La Patronne, under all the fat, and Old Billy, he would be too sorry, she was sure.
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