The lady, laughing and fluttering, now motioned them into the salon. Some of the furnishings had been taken away, thought Jeanne, looking about out of the corner of her eye—no lace over the windows! In this room sat the monsieur of the family, a large man, smoking a large cigar, and reading an enormous newspaper.
On encountering a new member of the male sex, Jeanne, although she had long passed the age when she needed personally to make the distinction, always made a first, sweeping division of them into two classes: those who were dangerous to women and those who were not. She instantly put down the monsieur of the new family among those who were not, although he was not bad looking, not more than forty-five, with all his teeth still in his mouth and all his thick, dark hair still on his head. But a woman of Jeanne's disillusioned experience of human nature knew from the expression of his listless brown eyes, from his careless attitude in his chair, from the indifferent way he looked at the three women before him, from the roughness of his hair, evidently combed but once a day, with no perfumed dressing on it, that he was not now and never had been a man who cared for conquests among women, or who had had many. She immediately felt for him a slight contempt as for somebody not all there mentally, and wondered if his wife were not occasionally unfaithful to him. She looked as though she might be that kind, a rattling, bird-headed little thing like that, reflected Jeanne behind her downcast eyes, changing imperceptibly from one humble, self-effacing pose to another.
Anna now turned to her aunt with a long breath, "I cannot make her understand," she said in Basque. "Think of a nice, pretty-looking lady like that not being able to talk! I cannot make her think anything but that you have come to be the cook yourself."
"Well, I might do worse," said Jeanne unexpectedly, her mouth watering at the chance for pickings. She spoke in Basque. Her face remained as unmoved as though it were the wood-carving it seemed.
Her niece stared for a moment, horizons opening before her. "Oh, Tante Jeanne, if you only would! With you here and me in the concierge's loge, what a chance for commissions off everybody from the grocer to the wash-woman!"
Jeanne agreed although with no enthusiasm. "But I'm not young. I don't need the money, if only Michel's wife would...." She gave a quick look at the man and woman before her, who were now exchanging some words in their queer-sounding tongue. "They seem such odd people. Who knows what they are like? Their not being able to talk, and all—and not even Catholics!" She hesitated, feeling a distaste for their foreignness, and for the fussy, effusive smilingness of the madame. Jeanne always distrusted ladies who smiled at their servants. There could only be war to the knife between servants and their employer. Why pretend anything else?
A little girl in a white dress came swiftly into the room now, a long-legged, slim child of eleven. She darted in as though she was looking for something, and in a hurry to find it. When she saw the two Basque women, she paused, suddenly motionless, and gave them a steady inquiring gaze out of clear dark eyes.
Jeanne stared at her, startled. The child had thick black hair, glossy and straight, a cream-like skin, and long eyes with arching eyebrows as black as her hair, which made a finely-drawn curving line on her forehead and ran back at the sides upon her temples.
Anna noticed the older woman's surprise and said casually, "Yes, isn't it queer how the little girl looks like one of us, a real little Basque? She seems nice enough, only with no manners. See how she comes bursting into a room and then only stares; but none of the family have any manners, if it comes to that."
The child made a quick move now and still moving swiftly stepped to Jeanne's side. To Jeanne's astonishment she put out her small white fingers and took Jeanne's gnarly old hand in a firm grip. "Bonjour, Madame," she said, smiling faintly at her attempt to speak the foreign language, although her eyes were grave.