“As old as I? Ma foi, one would suppose me an ancient, I who have a young son no older than eighteen. Those two could be my mother.”
“Both of them? It would be funny to have two mothers,” replied Lucie mischievously.
“Zut!” exclaimed Paulette contemptuously. “It is this city, no doubt, which teaches you to be so witty. I repeat they are of an age when I might be a daughter to either one. They are given work at the ouvroir of les Dames Americaine, but very little pay; three francs a day the two of them receive, but they maintain that it suffices. For me I make more, yet it is well to remember this ouvroir. One never knows what may happen. They have no allotment to depend upon, those two poor old bodies, for they have not a son in the army, as I have.”
“I have a father, should not I have an allotment?” asked Lucie.
“It goes to your mother, of course,” returned Paulette. “Do not worry over that; you are too young. We have enough, perhaps we do not feast, but at least we do not starve.” She paused to give herself up to meditating upon what Lucie had suggested, then she broke out with: “And even supposing there were an allotment for you, it would be small enough, and how would one go about getting it for you? It is not for me to say, and we had better think no more about it.”
“I like that Odette,” remarked Lucie, “and I am very glad she is so near that I can see her every day. Did you ask her aunt if she would let her come?”
“I asked, yes, for they seem respectable, though they were horrified to discover what the child had done, and no wonder. She has always been very venturesome, said the aunt. ‘I call it more than venturesome; I call it foolhardy,’ said the other.”
“And what do you call it?” asked Lucie.
Paulette shrugged her shoulders. “It is as one looks at those things. For you I should call it imbecile, for this other who is as thin and lithe as a monkey it is another thing, I would not have her do it again, but for this once it shows what she is made of. She would not hesitate, that one. If she saw a thing must be done, she would do it without delay.”
“I like that,” returned Lucie. “It is as our soldiers do.”