But Veuve Angelin’s temper had been roused by Nannon’s reminiscences.
“I am going,” she said crossly. “No one shall ever accuse me of gossiping. Monsieur’s breakfast has to be prepared by the time he returns from the Cygne, and with this monster of a pitcher to carry up the hill, just because the fille who fetches the water is ill—”
“Let me carry your pitcher, Madame Angelin!”
“I will take it to the very door. Peste, it is hard if one can’t do so much for one’s friends.”
“Yes, yes, Fanchon will carry it like a bird. And so Monsieur is absolutely at the hotel?”
“Bon jour, mesdames,” said old Nannon, laughing shrilly. “No one cares to help me with my basket, I suppose? It is heavy, too: it contains the clean clothes of my sister’s girl, Toinette, a good, hard-working girl she is, and fille at the Cygne, as you know.—What, Fanchon, my child, you would carry it! How admirable you are with your attentions to a poor old woman like me! I was wrong, Madame Angelin, I acknowledge it, in my estimate of your generation.”
There was a hesitating movement among the women: they had forgotten Toinette, and with such a link it was possible that Nannon might be the best newsmonger after all. Veuve Angelin noticed the movement, and it filled her with dismay.
“I saw it myself, I tell you,” she cried loudly, plunging at once into the heart of her subject. “I saw them come out of the Cygne, the old monsieur and the young lady, and walk up and down, up and down, under the trees before the door, and then just, just as they came towards me—”
She stopped. The women pressed closer. Fanchon was drawn back, and listened enthralled; old Nannon, whose temper was not so sharp as her words, chuckled under her breath, and said, “She has started at last.” Veuve Angelin looked round and went on in triumph, nodding her little head, and throwing out her hands.
“It is as I have told you. They were close by me, those two, and turning round to enter the hotel again, when, in one second—his foot slipped, and he came down on the pavement with his head against the steps. Imagine my feelings!”