“You say you are not fond of books,” said M. de Bellegarde; “but you must do yourself the justice to remember that your studies were interrupted early.”
“That is very true; on my tenth birthday I stopped going to school. I thought it was a grand way to keep it. But I picked up some information afterwards,” said Newman, reassuringly.
“You have some sisters?” asked old Madame de Bellegarde.
“Yes, two sisters. Splendid women!”
“I hope that for them the hardships of life commenced less early.”
“They married very early, if you call that a hardship, as girls do in our Western country. One of them is married to the owner of the largest india-rubber house in the West.”
“Ah, you make houses also of india-rubber?” inquired the marquise.
“You can stretch them as your family increases,” said young Madame de Bellegarde, who was muffling herself in a long white shawl.
Newman indulged in a burst of hilarity, and explained that the house in which his brother-in-law lived was a large wooden structure, but that he manufactured and sold india-rubber on a colossal scale.
“My children have some little india-rubber shoes which they put on when they go to play in the Tuileries in damp weather,” said the young marquise. “I wonder whether your brother-in-law made them.”