“True, and what every one does we must do.”
“But not every one succeeds, and ours would be a very little shop.”
“There are some other things we could do.”
“Mamma,” said Josephine, “do not dare! Let us set up a little shop.”
And accordingly the front room was cleared out and transformed. What care they took! How clean it all was when they were at last ready for customers, even to a diminutive sign.
“My daughter, who will wait?” asked Madame Labrosse.
“I will wait,” answered Josephine, and she hung her bird in the window, put the door ajar, and waited.
That was in the early summer, before the Blanche had forgotten its spring song.
“Mother,” said Josephine, “we belong to the people who do not succeed.”
“True!” replied Madame Labrosse, disconsolately. “But we must live, and there is the mother,” and she cast her eyes to the corner where her own mother sat, drawing at her pipe, so dark and withered as to look like a piece of punk that had caught fire and was going off in smoke. “But there are some things we can do.”