Old Madame Nestor started.
"Mice!" she exclaimed. "I hope not. It would be very serious for us—with so many beautiful stuffs about. I must make them examine, and if necessary get a cat. We have not had a cat lately—the last was stolen, she was such a beauty, and——"
And on the old body would have chattered for another half-hour, I daresay, had not the ladies again repeated that they were very hurried and must hasten home.
The idea of mice had taken hold of Madame Nestor's mind; it made her for the moment forget the children, though in passing through the little room where she had left them she had wondered where they were. She hurried into the workroom to relate her fears, and Gladys and Roger, as soon as she had left the shop, jumped up, not sorry to stretch their legs after having kept them still for nearly a quarter of an hour.
"I wonder if she'd be angry at our playing here," said Gladys. "What fun it was hiding and those ladies not knowing we were there! I think they were nice ladies, but I wish they had kept on talking properly. I liked to hear what they said."
"Why doesn't everybody talk properly here if some does?" asked Roger.
"I suppose," said Gladys, though she had not thought of it before, it had seemed so natural to hear people talking as she had always heard people talk—"I suppose those ladies are English. I wish they had talked to us, Roger. Perhaps they know Papa."
"They couldn't talk to us when they didn't know us was there," said Roger, with which Gladys could not disagree. But it made her feel rather sorry not to have spoken to the ladies—it would have been very nice to have found some one who could understand what they said.
"I wish we hadn't been hiding," she was going to say, but she was stopped by a great bustle which began to make itself heard in the sitting-room, and suddenly the door into the shop opened, and in rushed Madame Nestor, followed by the servant and two or three of the workpeople.
"Where are they, then? Where can they have gone, the poor little angels?" exclaimed the old lady, while the servant and the others ran after her repeating: