She was already dressed for the day, her dark hair dragged up to the top of her head in a fist-shaped knob, secured with combs, and her front locks frisés above her mercilessly intelligent face. Over her tightly-fitted gown of black broché and passementerie, showing a fat white V of neck, a velvet band and a pendant, she had passed an enormous apron of blue-and-white check.
She was looking over her well-covered shoulder with eyes that were everywhere at once, and giving orders in a voice that was as shrill as a whipsaw and as quick as a mill-race.
"Hold! Prop that door open, Rosalie, instead of bumping it each time with the good chair, little careless one; one would say a swing!" (She took breath in a gasp.)
"And those oysters from Monsieur Paul; are they not yet arrived? Do not open them immediately, as last time; and even so, see that you open me but half of them in order that they may keep. And thou, Marcel, take me that mat into the yard instead of brushing me the dust over the vegetables!" (Gasps.) "Bon dieu, one would need twenty eyes——As for these knives, Etienne, have you the intention to grind them to powder rather than find other work? It is then not necessary that they serve us for another day?" (Gasp.) "My faith!... Ah, Mees Ouall she—Agathe——but no, it is not necessary that you help. Go, go and make yourself beautiful for after the déjeuner, when you are presented to the friends. Make yourself beautiful for Pierre, who shall mount up afterwards to beg you to descend for a little half-hour, like a princess!" (Gasp.) "Eh bien, if you hold to assisting me now, but not in the kitchen, no, no; if you will have the goodness to dispose on the table within the serviettes that I have already placed in a heap. Also the glasses; they are in those cupboards there; no, not there, Mademoiselle, here, here, here. Arrange them all precisely as in England, at your château, yes? It is that! It is perfect!" (Gasp.) "And the little demoiselle of the Professor shall set out the cards with the names——But no, no, no, no, no; she does not know the names nor where they sit. Better to place these pots of cyclamen on the window-sill, Mademoiselle, if you please. One would say real flowers, would one not? But two francs." (Gasp.) "Fifty! It is true! Ah, pas ça——" seeing Agatha Walsh, entirely at a loss, picking up from the sofa-corner and unrolling a tricolor flag. "Not that. It should have been interlaced with the other. I was desolated, but one could not obtain in time, the Union Jacques. Flowers only, therefore. Tiens, I have not placed a cloth over the safe——"
She spread over the iron cash-safe a cloth edged and inserted with the lovely pillow-made lace of the neighbourhood, while her nimble French tongue ran ceaselessly on.
Her niece-by-marriage-to-be, helped by Olwen, set to work with all the good will in the world to lay the large round table. From the cupboard drawers indicated by Madame's plump hands they brought a tablecloth, an ornately embroidered table-centre, and napkins of the finest linen, all wedded to that beautiful lace; from the cupboards they took old and exquisite glass, and silver that could not have been bettered at the Grange of Miss Walsh's youth. Olwen noticed that the old-fashioned carved bread-cradle that swung from the ceiling had already been filled with blossomed and berried boughs of the arbutus, patron plant of the place. She thought as Mrs. Cartwright had thought, "I shall always think of arbutus—and here."
The chairs, some of them rush-bottomed, others of carved gilt, were ranged about the table; then Olwen and Agatha Walsh sped out into the yard and returned with the knives that Etienne, the boy in the green drugget apron, had at last polished to his satisfaction.
In the middle of the red-tiled kitchen Madame Leroux still stormed as shrilly as though she alone of all excellent housewives possessed worthless servants.
"Is it not enough that I myself must arise at half-past four today, and it is that I must do all myself, me, as well as to entertain the friends and the relations of Monsieur, they who are eating their blood with jealousy because he marries himself with an English lady of the high nobility? And why are the boards not placed over the bowls of soup? My faith, it is then that I must work, I must arrange, I must plan, I must have the eyes everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, while you let the fire die down, female idle ones who do nothing but regard with open mouths and talk in corners and try to eat me the glacés fruits out of the dishes?" (Gasp for breath.) "Take you these immediately, Marie Claire——" she waved towards a score of trussed chickens that looked like a frieze of poultry—"and set them in the pans. And pose you those lids so that the pottage may simmer as it must." She pointed to the vast arched fireplace with the grid running from one end to the other. "Mon Dieu, if this boy here had as many legs as an octopus he could not more expressly place them in my way. That he does at each moment! Is it that I have sent my own children out to receive les amis even at Arcachon, to be encumbered by thee? The children? They will feast out here in the yard with the children of the notary and the little cousins; I do not wish that they are the whole time with the grown ones when one talks——"
And she bustled out into the cour to look to the long trestled table there which had been surrounded by a still further variety of chairs.