“Figure to thyself what Mademoiselle has done this morning!” she cried, as they walked slowly toward the châlet, the sisters regulating their powerful stride by Honor’s limping little steps. “She has made a cheese!”
“My faith!” cried Margoton. “For example! that was well done.”
“Well done indeed!” Gretli nodded sagaciously. “When I tell thee that it is a cream cheese of the most perfect! Had she passed her life on the Alp, it could have been no better.”
“You helped me, Gretli!” said downright Honor. “I couldn’t have done it by myself.”
“Naturally! that understands itself. A little advice here or there, what is that? I tell thee, sister, friend Gruyère has no better cheese in his shop this day; and were it not that my honored Ladies might like it for their supper, I would send it to him, demanding a fancy price, my faith!”
M. Gruyère was the cheese merchant to whom Margoton was betrothed. Honor knew him well by sight, a little dried-up, snuff-colored man, who might go into Margoton’s pocket, she thought.
“He goes always well, this good Gruyère?” asked Gretli.
Margoton shook her head. Not too well, it appeared. He had been assassinated by rheumatism this past week; in the legs it seized him, in the arms, everywhere. To hear his cries, that lacerated the heart.
“He needs a wife, that one!” said Gretli slyly.
Margoton assented calmly. It was true, she said. He had no sense. Another year or so, when the garden had so to speak grown up a little more, understood itself as it were, one might begin to think about that. At present, with the cabbages what they were, and the snails devastating the cauliflowers, and the peas annihilated by a malediction of black rust, it was out of the question.