'Please, Madame, ring the bell.'
She pulled it with alacrity. I afterwards learnt that it did not ring.
'What has become of my gipsy pin?' I demanded, with an unaccountable sinking of the heart.
'Oh! the little pin with the red top? maybe it 'as fall on the ground; we weel find when you get up.'
I suspected that she had taken it merely to spite me. It would have been quite the thing she would have liked. I cannot describe to you how the loss of this little 'charm' depressed and excited me. I searched the bed; I turned over all the bed-clothes; I searched in and outside; at last I gave up.
'How odious!' I cried; 'somebody has stolen it merely to vex me.'
And, like a fool as I was, I threw myself on my face on the bed and wept, partly in anger, partly in dismay.
After a time, however, this blew over. I had a hope of recovering it. If Madame had stolen it, it would turn up yet. But in the meantime its disappearance troubled me like an omen.
'I am afraid, my dear cheaile, you are not very well. It is really very odd you should make such fuss about a pin! Nobody would believe! Do you not theenk it would be a good plan to take a your breakfast in your bed?'
She continued to urge this point for some time. At last, however, having by this time quite recovered my self-command, and resolved to preserve ostensibly fair terms with Madame, who could contribute so essentially to make me wretched during the rest of my journey, and possibly to prejudice me very seriously on my arrival, I said quietly—