"Such a man for wearing out socks. And always the heels," she remarked. "It would try the patience of anyone!"
"Does it try even yours?" asked Brigit.
The little woman looked up, her shrewd black eyes twinkling under their well-defined brows. "You have observed, then, that I am patient? But yes, my dear, God help the wife of an artist if she is not! He is terrible, my man, at times, but luckily I was born long-suffering. He has, too, a way of wrenching at button-holes in collars that tears them to bits, and desolates me."
"But——" began the girl, and then stopped.
All things considered, there was remarkably little constraint in her feelings for this good woman, but somehow at that moment she wished to change the subject.
Madame Joyselle, however, gave a gentle chuckle, and continued: "He was his most terrific yesterday! Like a lion with no self-control; it was very ridiculous."
Brigit started. Terrible, yes, but—it struck her as very unfitting for the great man's plain little wife to find him ridiculous. And Félicité, as her husband always called her, saw her start, and understood.
"Ah, yes, to you he is the great artist as well as Théo's father—hein? To me he is, of course, just—my husband. All men are, they say, different, but surely all husbands are much alike."
"There are certainly very few men like—him." Brigit took a sock out of the basket and looked at it absently. There was a short silence, during which Félicité did not speak, but she was watching her visitor in the glass. Then she said suddenly, with a certain briskness in her voice, "Shall I tell you about him? About my husband, you know, not about the great artist of—all you others."
Brigit nodded. "Yes, please do. Tell me about—long ago, in Normandy."