PORTRAIT OF LA PETITE.
other that the exercise would at least save us from pleurisy or rheumatic fever.
It was somewhere during an interval of exhausted sleep that we were aware of Suzanne standing at our bedside and asking us in her strong voice if we would like some coffee or some wine. We sleepily said No, but perhaps, plus tard, when our things had come from the hotel, some water. It seemed a very short time before those things made their appearance, but it is obviously impossible to wash one’s self in a toy piano—a fact which we explained as gently as possible to la petite. She retired, and presently we heard a heavy step on the cuvier ladder; something was set down outside, and, rising, we found a very large garden watering-pot full of ice-cold water, and a very small white basin, sitting side by side on our doorstep. They were tedious, and the toy piano was nearly washed away in the flood; but they sufficed.
CHAPTER VII.
AIS! vous êtes fraîches comme des roses, mesdemoiselles!’ shouted Suzanne, as her two guests seated themselves at her kitchen table with faces of a pale lavender colour.
‘Blue roses,’ said my cousin ungraciously, as she rubbed her cheeks to free them from the frozen stiffness produced by the contents of the watering-pot, ‘and the coffee is cold,’ putting her hand round the thick cup that had just been filled for her. The discontented British croak was happily overwhelmed in Suzanne’s loud and abundant conversation on things in general; the sourness of the bread was more or less baffled by plastered layers of pear jam; and when we remembered that the coffee had been waiting for us since seven o’clock and that it was now a quarter to eight, we felt that we were not in a position to complain of its tepidity. Strange that a week in France should have so altered our point of view as to make us feel guilty at not having finished our breakfast at eight o’clock.