"You old humbug!" they laughed at me. And addressing Blanche again, Elise Dufour said, "Wait till those dividends come rolling in! He will gnash his teeth more than ever, won't he?"
"Dividends?" said I. "What dividends? Who dares to mention dividends in front of me?"
"Ah! he hasn't heard," cried Blanche, recovering her buoyancy. "Henri is going to get a hundred shares for Jacques in a company that is coming out. We should not be able to get them ourselves, but the man is a friend of Henri's. What do you think of it, our making investments? Isn't it great?"
"It is true," said Elise, nodding. "It will be a very good thing. Henri means to apply for quite a lot."
I could guess what it was, though, not being a capitalist, I paid no heed to the Bourse and was absolutely ignorant whether Amalgamated Pancakes were heavy, or Funded Fireworks had gone up. Henri had chanced to speak of it to me. I had no doubt that Jacques might do much worse than hold a hundred shares in that concern.
"What do you think of it?" repeated Blanche. "We have been working eight years to save three thousand francs—won't it seem wonderful to have a few francs that we haven't worked for at all coming in every year?"
She went on talking about it after Elise had gone. "It will be like something in a fairy tale, to have a little money falling regularly to us from the skies, as it were. What it will mean! Even Henri and Elise do not know. We shall be in a position to indulge in pleasures that sound fantastic now. For instance, if Jacques is out of sorts, I shall be able to pack him off to the country to get well. To-day he would not hear of such a thing—he would not touch our nest-egg if he were on his last legs. And the little one! What joy to buy Baby's clothes without dipping into that! To buy him perhaps a little fur coat out of money that poor Jacques has not had to whip his brains for. Won't he look sweet, the pet, dressed in dividends? I wish that you could take some shares, Pierre. But I know."
Then Jacques returned, seemingly deep in thought, and I said: "Come in and make yourself at home. Congratulations, my financial magnate!"
"Hein?" he queried. "What? Oh, that! Yes. It had slipped my mind for the moment." He went over to his wife and kissed her tenderly. It appeared that he had been out for two or three hours, and he demanded, with deep anxiety, if the child still thrived.
"Mais oui, goose. He sleeps in there," said Blanche. "The shares had slipped thy mind? Ah, but listen, thou dwellest overmuch on thy work—in the end thou wilt have a breakdown."