"Why, he is funny!" exclaimed Renée. "But how horrible! How they have cut his hair! Listen, my little fellow, your father will probably only come home for dinner and I shall be obliged to settle you here. I'm your stepmamma, sir. Will you kiss me?"
"Willingly," answered Maxime without any fuss; and he kissed the young wife on both cheeks, taking hold of her by the shoulders, whereby the garde française habit was a trifle crumpled.
She freed herself, laughing, and saying: "Dear me! how funny he is, the little shearling!" Then again approaching him and more serious: "We shall be friends sha'n't we? I want to be a mother to you. I reflected about it while I was waiting for my tailor, who was engaged, and I said to myself that I ought to be very kind and bring you up quite properly. I will be very nice!"
Maxime continued looking at her, with his blue, minx-like eyes, and suddenly: "How old are you?" he asked.
"But that is a question one never asks!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands together. "He doesn't know it, poor little fellow! It will be necessary to teach him everything. Fortunately I can still confess my age. I am twenty-one."
"I shall soon be fourteen. You might be my sister—"
He did not finish his sentence, but his eyes added that he had expected to find his father's second wife much older. He was very near her and looked at her neck so attentively that she almost finished by blushing. Besides, her giddy head was turning, it could never dwell for long on the same subject; and she began to walk about and talk of her tailor, forgetting that she was addressing a child.
"I ought to have been here to receive you. But, just fancy, Worms brought me this costume this morning. I tried it on and found it rather successful. It is very stylish, isn't it?"
She had placed herself before a mirror. Maxime was coming and going behind her to examine her on all sides.
"However as I put on the coat," she added, "I noticed there was a large fold there on the left shoulder, do you see? That fold is very ugly, it makes me look as if I had one shoulder higher than the other."