“We shall soon be in the street at this rate,” said Madame Querterot despairingly. “One cannot live on a few packets of hair-pins and a bottle of hair-oil. No. If only we could move to a fashionable locality. Here no one ever comes and we have but to die of hunger.”
“We haven’t been here very long. We may do better presently. It is the customers whom you massage that keep us from starvation.” Julie propped open the door into the shop and taking up her work sat down by the table in the parlour.
“Bah! Who knows how long they will continue? They have the skin of crocodiles, all of them. What can I do with it? Nothing. And in time they will find that out, and I shall be put to the door. What will happen then? You, I suppose, think you will be safe in your religious house. And your poor mother, you will be able to mock yourself of her then, hein!”
“Mother, you know I shall not leave you while you want me. I have not spoken of becoming a nun since father died, have I?”
“Your father!” exclaimed Madame Querterot with emotion. “Your father was a poltroon. No sooner did I need his assistance than he deserted me!”
“Mother!” cried Julie, and there was that in her tone which made Madame Querterot’s lamentations die away into inaudible mumblings.
The girl did not say any more, but went on quietly with her sewing, till after a while her mother rose to go upstairs.
At the door she paused.
“Bert is coming to supper,” she said over her shoulder. “You have not forgotten that it is to-night we go with him to the theatre? He will be here soon, I should think,” and she went on up the narrow stairs without waiting for an answer.
Half an hour later, when they sat down to a cold meal, which Julie had carefully prepared—for Madame Querterot was particularly fond of eating and had seen that her daughter early acquired the principles of good cookery—they had been joined by the guest to whom she had alluded.