“Perhaps he’s working.”
“Oh, no! he’d send us some money if he was.”
“Then he’s gone on a journey, perhaps?”
“I don’t know.”
“He wrote to Mamma Theodore, no doubt?”
“I don’t know.”
Pierre asked no further questions. In fact, he felt somewhat ashamed of his attempt to extract information from this child of eleven, whom he thus found alone. It was quite possible that she knew nothing, that Salvat, in a spirit of prudence, had even refrained from sending any tidings of himself. Indeed, there was an expression of truthfulness on the child’s fair, gentle and intelligent face, which was grave with the gravity that extreme misery imparts to the young.
“I am sorry that Mamma Theodore isn’t here,” said Pierre, “I wanted to speak to her.”
“But perhaps you would like to wait for her, Monsieur l’Abbe. She has gone to my Uncle Toussaint’s in the Rue Marcadet; and she can’t stop much longer, for she’s been away more than an hour.”
Thereupon Celine cleared one of the chairs on which lay a handful of scraps of wood, picked up on some waste ground.