“And your papa, he’s good to you, too, isn’t he? He doesn’t flog you, or quarrel with your mother, does he? What do they talk about when they go to bed?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m asleep then.”
“Do they talk about your cousin Florent?”
“I don’t know.”
Mademoiselle Saget thereupon assumed a severe expression, and got up as if about to go away.
“I’m afraid you are a little story-teller,” she said. “Don’t you know that it’s very wicked to tell stories? I shall go away and leave you, if you tell me lies, and then Muche will come back and pinch you.”
Pauline began to cry again at the threat of being abandoned. “Be quiet, be quiet, you wicked little imp!” cried the old maid shaking her. “There, there, now, I won’t go away. I’ll buy you a stick of barley-sugar; yes, a stick of barley-sugar! So you don’t love your cousin Florent, eh?”
“No, mamma says he isn’t good.”
“Ah, then, so you see your mother does say something.”
“One night when I was in bed with Mouton—I sleep with Mouton sometimes, you know—I heard her say to father, ‘Your brother has only escaped from the galleys to take us all back with him there.’”