"Yes, Madame, comique excentrique. That is why I cannot cook. My profession required me always to eat in restaurants, but I can wash dishes, clean rooms and build fires. Thanks to God, for the service you need, I know how to mind babies. I never had anyone to help me with Marcelle."
Marcelle was a fifteen year old girl, hare-lipped and cross-eyed, but her mother loved her dearly. Emilie did not say who Marcelle's father was. But she was not as reticent as the woman of Samaria, and would have scorned to come to me under false pretenses. Tout savoir est tout pardonner. If you cannot live up to the spirit of that motto, do not plan a life without worry for yourself in Paris.
"Last year, before I found you, Madame, Marcelle and I were out of work. When you came in here in July we had earned only fifty francs in two months. Marcelle did not get her job as laundry apprentice until October. Oh no, we didn't exactly starve. You can get cold-boiled potatoes and they sell bits of bread and left over coffee very cheap at night when the restaurants close."
Here she sat up to wring her floor-rag into the brown water of the pail.
"I hope you'll not regret spoiling me the way you do. You let me talk, but you can trust me not to forget myself. Take this afternoon when those ladies are coming for tea. You know how I wait on the table. That is a rôle. I get my happiness in considering everything a rôle. I play at being femme de ménage. These dirty old clothes are my costume: the bucket and mop are stage properties."
"Do you like having company at tea?" I broke in.
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On who they are." Here Emilie made up her mind to speak with firmness. "Now, without indiscretion, Madame, the ladies you asked for this afternoon are not interesting. I was here when two of them called and you told them to come to tea."
"Why not?"