“Poor, dear little woman!”
I burst into tears without knowing why.
They covered my white apron with a frightful black one. It was for school. I knew what the school was; I had many big friends who went to it, I ought to have been proud to be considered a big girl, but I was in despair. I repeated, weeping: “Grandmother, I will be very good. I don’t want to go to school. Keep me with you.”
My grandfather said he thought they might very well wait until the winter was over before shutting me up in a prison.
I screamed all the louder at this word, Prison. Arthémise declared, crying herself, that I was still too young to go, that it was a murder!
“A murder! a murder!” repeated grandmother in anger. “That woman must be mad,” she said to grandfather, who in his turn called Arthémise “insolent.”
Here was another “family drama”; but they did not “make up” with each other after being angry, as they did with my parents.
“I shall send you out of the house!” said grandmother to Arthémise; “you shall make up your packages to-day, and to-morrow you shall return to Caumenchon. Leave the room!”
“You might scold her, but not send her off,” said grandfather. “That woman loves Juliette sincerely. And, do you know what I think? She is right. It is a murder. Leave the little thing to play for a year or two more, she will make all the greater progress for it later.”
“I wish her to surpass all the others at once,” replied grandmother; “and then I’d like to know what you are meddling yourself with it for? I know what I am doing. Hold your tongue.”