"She tink to go on ze stage?"
"Oh, no."
"Not? It ees a vast, zat."
She was always cold.
Whenever we were out of the morning-room she piled on the coal. On the second day I remonstrated. Fuel, I explained, was very expensive so far from the coal-fields. She smiled. "You are ze careful one, hein?" and she looked at me in a way which made me uncomfortable.
But I did not feel about the poor little creature as my mother did.
My mother went so far as to wish we had not sent for her. She would never have allowed her to come if she had seen her first. I thought my mother severe.
Everybody else, including the servants, liked Madame Aurore. No wonder. She spent her life doing things for people. Sewing for us all day like mad, so that our two best frocks might be finished in spite of the shortness of the time; and still ready at nightfall to show the cook how to make p'tite marmite, or sauce à la financière—equally ready to advise the housemaid how to give the Bond Street, not to say the Rue de la Paix, touch to her Sunday alpaca, and chic to old Ransom's beehive hat.
If she asked them one and all more questions in a minute than they could answer in a month, what did that show but the generous interest she took in her fellow-beings?