She remembered to drop her eyes, following the precepts of the teacher of deportment, and profited by the gesture to despise Mme. Garnier's shoes, stuffed lumpily full, like badly made sausages.
When Mme. Garnier finished a long speech, she didn't mean a word of, about how nicely Marise had played, "Oh, thank you very much, Madame Garnier," she answered, looking up for a moment.
Jeanne put her hat and coat on now, as Danielle romped in, talking at the top of her voice. Madame Garnier, with the perfunctory air of one attending to a familiar duty, savagely reproached her for boisterousness, and general heathenishness of manners. Danielle took this as it was meant, and paying not the slightest attention to the rebuke, went on talking at the top of her voice, telling her mother and brother all about the foolishness back of the scenes. "It was simply killing!" she shouted, laughing so that no one but Marise had any idea what she was talking about, "I thought I'd die, didn't you, Marise? You never saw anything in your life so funny! All of us wrong side up, with our heads ... oh, ha! ha! ha!"
She and Marise went off into peals of laughter which they immediately suppressed to giggles and then to smothered muffled gasps, as they saw the Reverend Mother's dignified black draperies moving down the side-aisle. They'd hear from it at school if Reverend Mother caught them in such a breach of manners as laughing in a public place!
"Who won the prize, my darling?" whispered Jeanne, in Marise's ear, as she smoothed down the collar of her coat.
"Oh, I did," Marise whispered back casually. She had left the big red album of Morceaux de Salon with Mlle. Vivier, because she knew if she tried to carry it home and passed by a school-mate she would be greeted with howls of jeering laughter. She would bring some paper to-morrow, to wrap it up.
"We may as well walk along together," said Mme. Garnier now. "Our road lies your way."
Jeanne dropped respectfully behind, Mme. Garnier walked with Marise, Danielle with her brother. Marise shot one sideways glance at Mme. Garnier as they started along the sidewalks. "Sapristi," as Jeanne said, "what an ugly hat! How could anybody not just drop dead to be seen with such a horror on!" "Yes, Madame," she answered politely, at random, not paying any attention to Mme. Garnier's drone. How vulgar it was to let your dress wrinkle across the back where the top of your corset came. And it was worse to let it cave in in front, at the same place. When she was grown up, she would never let her dress do that! Marise reflected with the utmost satisfaction on the excellent cut and hang of her own dress. There hadn't been a better one there, and she had silk stockings while most of the girls had clumsy cotton ones, or at best lisle thread. Jeanne certainly did know how to buy clothes, and Papa never said a word against paying the bills. Well, she could wear them too! She had style. She cast a pleased sideways glance at her slim straight silhouette, reflected in the large window of a shop, saw in the same mirror Mme. Garnier's uninteresting middle-aged figure, and then surprisingly she also caught a glimpse of Jeanne, behind the others, her handkerchief at her eyes as if she were crying. Marise stopped short, and turned sharply to look back. For mercy's sake, what could be the matter with Jeanne? Why, yes, she was, she was actually crying, the big tears rolling down her leathery cheeks. With an unceremonious excuse to Mme. Garnier, Marise left her planted there on the sidewalk, and darted back to Jeanne, asking anxiously what had happened.
Jeanne looked at her fondly, her wrinkled old face bright with love, "I am thanking Our Holy Mother and all the Saints for your triumph, my darling!" she said, her voice trembling. "All this day I have been praying for you, all this day."
Marise's first impulse was to inquire stupidly, "What triumph?" and her next was to burst into laughter as she realized that Jeanne had worked herself up so about that old Gambert music prize, of all things! But these gusts had come and gone before the expression of her face had had time to change; and when they had gone, all she could see was the affection shining in the old woman's eyes. Dear, darling old Jeanne! Let her think it was a triumph! She should never know anything else about it, bless her!