Then there was another interval of silence. In the dining-room, the window of which opened on to the terrace, old Rose had just begun to lay the table with much angry clattering of crockery and plate. She seemed to be in a very bad temper, and banged the chairs about while breaking into snatches of grumbling and growling. At last she went to the street door, and, craning out her head, reconnoitred the square in front of the Sub-Prefecture. After some minutes' waiting, she came to the terrace-steps and cried:
'Monsieur Mouret isn't coming home to dinner, then?'
'Yes, Rose, wait a little longer,' Marthe replied quietly.
'Everything is getting burned to cinders! There's no sense in it all. When master goes off on those rounds he ought to give us notice! Well, it's all the same to me; but your dinner will be quite uneatable.'
'Ah! do you really think so, Rose?' asked a quiet voice just behind her. 'We will eat it, notwithstanding.'
It was Mouret who had just arrived.[2] Rose turned round, looked her master in the face, and seemed on the point of breaking into some angry exclamation; but at the sight of his unruffled countenance, in which twinkled an expression of merry banter, she could not find a word to say, and so she retired. Mouret made his way to the terrace, where he paced about without sitting down. He just tapped Désirée lightly on the cheek with the tips of his fingers, and the girl greeted him with a responsive smile. Marthe raised her eyes, and when she had glanced at her husband she began to fold up her work.
'Aren't you tired?' asked Octave, looking at his father's boots, which were white with dust.
'Yes, indeed, a little,' Mouret replied, without, however, saying anything more about the long journey which he had just made on foot.
Then in the middle of the garden he caught sight of a spade and a rake, which the children had forgotten there.
'Why are the tools not put away?' he cried. 'I have spoken about it a hundred times. If it should come on to rain they would be completely rusted and spoilt.'