The ripple of laughter that greeted this statement chased the last tear from Margaret’s eyes.
“Hereafter,” she said resolutely, “there shall be no beef, fruit, and creams for me. I intend to become an expert too.”
Lizzette threw up her hands in protest. “Non, non, Margaret. Ze strength fail unless ze diet ees generous for you. Ze waste tissue must be repaired first. Non, non, cherie. Trust Lizzette to know ze best.”
“Well, I submit on one condition,” and Margaret threw a quick glance at Antoine’s pale face. “I must share with Antoine. He needs rebuilding as much as I do.”
“C’est vrai,” said Lizzette in a choked voice. “Il est très souffrant; but aujourdhui I make some famous potage de lapin for all, and we dine like ze empereur. Eph he bring ze lapin and say, ‘Game mighty shy somehow, Missis Minaud, but I don’t fergit Miss Margaret, nohow.’”
“Poor fellow! I am afraid he robs himself,” said Margaret sympathetically.
“If he does, other people make it up to him,” replied Elsie. “The community has had its usual call to feed him and his mother. I asked him one day when he was here with a brace of partridges if he shot enough game to support them. ‘Lawzee, missy!’ said he with a laugh that showed the whites of his eyes and the internal anatomy of a cavernous mouth, ‘not by a jugful. Dis yere game law jest doin’ a heep o’ mischuf to po’ men. I hez ter be mighty cahful.’ So, Miss Murchison, on the principle that the receiver is as bad as the thief, I mistrust you’ve been cheating your beloved country of its just dues whenever you have smacked your lips over a bit of partridge breast!”
“Let us be thankful that rabbits are not interdicted, and that Eph’s sense of kindness exceeds his respect for law.”
“‘How are the mighty fallen,’” quoted Elsie tragically. “I fully expected to see you rise in the might and majesty of insulted justice, and visit condign punishment upon poor Eph by refusing to be any longer a party to his crime.”
“Hunger is said to know no law, and while I feel inclined to forgive Eph for past sins, I shall have to try to impress upon him a fuller sense of his obligations as a law-abiding citizen.”