“No. Once you are in the rooms they are cheerful enough.”
“It did me. Gloomy, with a peculiar gloom, you understand. I’m sure the passage was dark as night. It must have been its darkness that startled me as we were going in.”
“By the way, Lavinia, what was the matter with you then?” interrupted her sister.
“I don’t know, Nancy; I said at the time I did not know. With my first step into the passage, some horror seemed to meet me and drive me backward.”
“Some horror!” repeated Nancy.
“I seemed to feel it so. I had still the glare of the streets and the fiery red walls in my eyes, which must have caused the house passage to look darker than it ought. That was all, I suppose—but it turned me sick with a sort of fear; sick and shivery.”
“That salon may be made as pretty a room as any in Sainteville,” remarked Madame Carimon. “Many of the English residents here have only one salon in their apartments. You see, we don’t go in for ceremony; France is not like England.”
On the morrow the little house under the wing of the Maison Rouge was secured by the Miss Preens. They took it in their joint names for five years. To complete the transaction they were ushered upstairs to the salon and presence of Madame Veuve Sauvage—a rather stately looking old lady, attired in a voluminous black silk robe and a mourning cap of fine muslin. Madame, who could not speak a syllable of English, conversed graciously with her future tenants through the interpretation of Mary Carimon, offering to be useful to them in any way she could. Lavinia and Ann Preen both signed the bail, or agreement, and Madame Veuve Sauvage likewise signed it; by virtue of which she became their landlady, and they her tenants of the little house for five years. Madame Carimon, and a shopman who came upstairs for the purpose, signed as witnesses.
Wine and the little cakes called pistolets were then introduced; and so the bargain was complete.