Madame Aurore laughed out. "Ze climat!" she said, in a voice that must certainly have penetrated the next room. "Somesing in ze air." Then lower, with a tigerish swiftness: "I shall not ron ze risk for my liddle gal! Non!" She tossed the satin on the machine, thrust it under the needle, and seemed to work the treadle by dint of compressing lips and knitting brows.
Bettina and I agreed we would not talk to her any more about her daughter, since, unlike most mothers, the thought of her child did not soften Madame Aurore, but made her hard and angry.
We put this down to wounded feelings at my mother's curt dismissal of the theme.
Surreptitiously—for she knew leave would be refused—Bettina gave Madame Aurore some of our old toys, and other little gifts, to take home to her daughter.
I did not prevent this, for I, too, felt uneasily that we ought somehow to make up for our mother's nervous detestation of Madame Aurore.
Had this, as the little dressmaker hinted, something of sheer sickness in it—an invalid's caprice? Bettina said lightheartedly: "Oh, it's only because Aurore is a foreigner. Mother admits she never did like foreigners."
After the first day there was almost no personal interchange between Madame Aurore and her employer. Yet I had a queer feeling that a silent drama was being played out between those two who, without meeting, were acting and reacting upon each other.
Madame Aurore asked each day, How was madame? in a voice of extremest solicitude—nay, of gloomiest apprehension.
I found myself wrestling with an uncomfortable feeling that this hopeless view of my mother's health was somehow prompted by a desire "to get even" with the one unresponsive member of our little circle—to get even in the only way open to Madame Aurore. I knew she advised the housemaid to look out for another place, and offered to find her one in London, where she would be paid double, and have almost nothing to do. The housemaid was greatly tempted, but I was told she said she wouldn't go till her mistress was better.
"Bettair! She vill not last a mont!" said Madame Aurore.