"Mademoiselle," came in a loud whisper after the queer rapping had gone on for some time, "are you awake? Open—I have the hands full."
It was Françoise. Gladys opened. The little servant, her round red face rounder and redder than usual, for she had been all the morning at the kitchen fire, and had besides been passing through unusual excitement, stumped into the room, a bowl, from which the steam of some hot liquid was rising, in one hand, and a plate with a large hunch of bread in the other.
She put them down on the little table and wiped her hot face with her apron.
"Ah, Mademoiselle," she said, "no one would believe it—the trouble I have had to get some breakfast for you! She would not have it—lazy little creatures, she called you—you might come down and get it for yourselves—a piece of dry bread and some dripping soup—that was all she would have given you, and I know you are not used to that. So what did I do but wait till her back was turned—the cross cat—and then in with the milk and a tiny bit of chocolate—all I could find, and here it is! Hot, at any rate; but not very good, I fear."
Gladys did not, of course, understand a quarter of the words which Françoise rattled off in her queer Norman-French; but her wits were sharpened by anxiety, and she gathered quite enough of the sense of the little servant's long speech to feel very grateful to her. In her hurry Françoise had poured all the chocolate—or hot milk rather, for there was very little chocolate in the composition—into one bowl; but the children were too hungry to be particular. They drank turn-about, and finished by crumbling up the remains of the bread in the remains of the milk and eating it with the spoon, turn-about also, Françoise standing by, watching them with satisfaction! Suddenly she started.
"I must run down," she said, "or she will be after me again. I wish I could stay to help you to dress Monsieur Roger, but I dare not," and gathering up the dishes in her apron so that they could not be seen, she turned to go.
"Dress him as quickly as you can," she said to Gladys, "and then she cannot say you have given any trouble. But stay—I will see if I cannot get you a little hot water for the poor bébé."
And off she set, to appear again in a minute with a tin jug of hot water which she poured out into the basin at once for fear the absence of the tin jug should be discovered.
"She has eyes on every side of her head," she whispered as she went off again.