"So—you have been asleep!" exclaimed the servant; "well, perhaps it was the best thing. Well, come down now, Monsieur Adolphe is asking for you," and she would scarcely let them wait to dip their hands in water and smooth their tumbled hair.
"What will become of them when she comes back and poor Madame ill in bed, who can say?" the peasant girl muttered to herself as she led them downstairs. "I wish their friends would come to fetch them—I do. It's certainly very strange for rich people to leave their children like that," and Françoise shook her head.
Monsieur Adolphe received the children kindly. He had been a little alarmed when Françoise had told him she could not find them in the sitting-room, for he knew it would trouble his poor mother greatly if she found her little favourites were neglected, for the thought of them was one of the things most troubling the poor woman in the middle of her suffering.
"If but the Papa would come for them," she had already said to her son. "I know not what to do. I think we must ask some advice. Anna dislikes them so; and if she comes back to-morrow——"
"She may not come till the day after," said Adolphe. "Do not trouble yourself about anything just now. The children are all right for the moment."
"And you will be kind to them at dinner, and give them nice pieces. They do not eat much, but they are used to more delicate cooking than ours."
"Reassure yourself. I will do all as you would yourself. And if you keep quiet, my good Mamma, perhaps in a day or two you can see them for yourself. The great thing is to keep quiet, and that will keep down the fever, the doctor says," repeated poor Adolphe, who was really a good and affectionate son.
"Ah, yes," thought poor Madame Nestor, "that is all very well, but at my age," for she was really old—old to be the mother of Adolphe, having married late in life, "at my age one does not break one's leg for nothing. But the good God knows best. If my time has come, so be it. I have no great anxiety to leave behind me, like some poor women, thank Heaven! Only these poor children!"
And thanks to what Madame Nestor had said, and thanks in part, too, to his kind feelings, Adolphe was very friendly to the children at dinner; and in reply to their timid inquiries about his mother, told them that the doctor thought she was going on well, and in a day or two they might see her, if they were very good and quiet. So the meal passed off peacefully.
"After all," thought Adolphe, "they do not cost one much. They eat like sparrows. Still it is a great responsibility—poor little things!"