"Her name is Madame Herbaut, mademoiselle. This friend of mine has two daughters, and every Sunday she invites a few people of their age to her house. I think I said as much to mademoiselle when I asked her permission to attend the entertainment."
"And who are these young people?"
"The young girls who visit Madame Herbaut are mostly shop-girls, or young women who give music and drawing lessons. There are also several bookkeepers among them. As for the men, they are, for the most part, shop-keepers, or musicians, or lawyer's clerks,—all very respectable young men, I assure you, for Madame Herbaut is very particular about the people she invites, and very naturally, as she has daughters to marry off, and between you and me, mademoiselle, it is to establish them in life that she gives these little reunions."
"My dear Laîné," said Ernestine, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "I want to attend one of these reunions at Madame Herbaut's."
"Mademoiselle!" exclaimed the governess, thinking her ears must have deceived her, "what did mademoiselle say?"
"I said I wished to attend one of Madame Herbaut's entertainments,—to-morrow evening, for instance."
"Good heavens! Is mademoiselle really in earnest?"
"Decidedly so."
"What, you, mademoiselle, go to the house of such a very humble person! Impossible! Mademoiselle cannot even be thinking of such a thing?"
"Impossible, and why, my good Laîné?"