“I told my servant to tell you, Mademoiselle,”—Mrs Dawson’s lips quivered over the name; she had not pronounced it for many a long day—“that my house was full.”
“But not replete,” said Mademoiselle with avidity. “She did let out, that faithful one, that there was one appartement triste in your beautiful villa. I feel that I should be at home here. It is wonderful when we feel that drawing of the heart towards certain of our fellow-creatures. I should love to be a member of your little family. I should make myself très-agréable: I should converse in the broken English which makes your folk laugh. We of the French tongue never laugh at your mistakes when you try to copy us. But I mind not that. I like you to laugh. May I see the chamber and decide for myself?”
“Well, if you are satisfied,” said Mrs Dawson, “I of course want to make as much money as I can. The room is at the very top of the house, and I have stowed away one or two boxes just under the roof. I hardly ever let it because it faces due west and the slates get so hot people complain that they can’t sleep in it of nights. It’s next door, also, to a large attic where three young ladies and their governess sleep. You mayn’t even find quiet in the little room.”
“I mind not,” said Mademoiselle, “I am accustomed to the vagaries of the youthful. I am indeed a teacher from that most distinguished school, Hazlitt Chase. My dear pupil, Penelope Carlton, and I, came to Marshlands two nights ago, she to visit my dear and most beloved pupil, Miss Honora Beverley, and I to search for a meagre appartement in the cheapest part of your gay and sparkling town. I find not what I want. I roam abroad to-day to seek for fresh quarters. I see your house so cool, so chaste, so—if I may use the word—refined. I say to myself—here is a home, here is a rest: I mind not the hot attic, for by day, at least, I shall be happy.”
“Oh, if you know Miss Beverley, that makes all the difference,” said Mrs Dawson. Her manner changed on the spot. “It is strange,” she continued, “that you should come from the school where Miss Beverley is being educated, and it is still stranger that the sister of one of your pupils should be at the present moment occupying the room next to the west attic. She is an exceedingly pretty young lady, and remarkably well off. She’s a governess to three little pupils, and they’re well supplied with not only the necessaries, but the luxuries of life. Even jewellery of the best sort isn’t denied them. But there—what a chatterbox I am! Jane, take this lady up to the western attic, and let her decide whether she will be satisfied to sleep there.” Jane and the voluble Mademoiselle climbed the weary stairs up to the attic which, at the present moment, must have registered ninety degrees in the shade. Even Mademoiselle gasped a trifle as she entered the tiny room; but she was too glad to be in the same house with Brenda Carlton not to put up with some personal discomforts. She, accordingly, decided to engage the apartment; told Jane that her luggage of the most modest would arrive within an hour and went down to interview Mrs Dawson.
“You do deprecate yourself, dear Madame,” she said. “Your room you so despise is to me a haven of rest. It is doubtless what might be called hot, but what of that? It belongs to a home, and I shall—I feel it—be happy under your roof.”
“My terms,” said Mrs Dawson, “are—”
Mademoiselle puckered her brows with anxiety. “You would not be hard on a poor French governess,” she said. “She would make herself très-agréable: she would tell stories of the most witty at your dinner table: she would make your visitors laugh and laugh again. She would instruct you in that cooking of la belle France which you English know so little about. She would offer herself to market for you in the land of these broiling July days. You will not be hard on one at once so poor and so useful.”
“I charge the ladies in the front attic a guinea a week each,” said Mrs Dawson.
“But that chamber is magnifique!” cried Mademoiselle. “I asked your most delightful Jane to show it to me, and I was struck by its size and the beautiful draught that blew through it. Indeed, it is cheap—very cheap—to live in such a room in the very height of the season for so small a sum. But the western attic, Madame, you will not charge the poor lonely foreigner as much for the western attic?”