"I have two reasons for wishing to live in the country, monsieur: first, my health, which is not very good, and the doctors say that the pure country air will cure me entirely."
"Yes! yes!" cried the girl, taking her friend's hand, "I am perfectly sure that you will soon be as stout as I, who am a regular little ball. You won't have any more pains in your chest, you'll have a good appetite, and we'll walk a lot and eat all day long! Oh! you won't be sick any more, Honorine, I promise you; you'll get back your strength and color and be in magnificent health!"
"I trust so, my child; at all events, we must always hope for what will make us happy; the happiness we have in anticipation is sometimes the only happiness we have at all.—But I haven't told you my second reason, monsieur. Unfortunately it is one of those to which everything must give way. It concerns the state of my purse. My means are very modest, monsieur, and in order that they may be sufficient for our needs, that we may have to undergo fewer privations, it is most important that we should leave Paris, where it costs so much to live in these days!"
"Dear Honorine, if you didn't have me with you, if you lived alone, you would be very comfortable, and you could have a lot of things which you deny yourself in order to give them to me!"
"It is unkind of you to say that, Agathe. You forget that you are my ward, my only companion; that you are a sister, a child, and a friend to me, all in one! That, if I am able to be of some little service to you as a guide, to protect you and to take the place of a family, your mother once did as much for me, and that I am simply paying my debt by giving you what I received from her. Lastly, what you forget above all—and I did not expect to have to remind you of it—is that without you, who have been for so long my faithful companion, I should be alone, I should have no one to love, no one to whom I could tell my thoughts, my memories, my dreams; no one to nurse me when I am sick; in short, that I should be very unhappy! Now say that you are a burden to me!"
The young woman's eyes were wet with tears. Agathe threw her arms about her neck and kissed her again and again.
"Ah! I was wrong, I was wrong!" she cried. "Forgive me, Honorine; you know that I don't know what I am saying, that I speak without thinking, I won't do it any more! Why, I know well enough that it would be as impossible for you to part with me as for me to live away from you."
"Well, it's all over now; let us forget it and apologize to monsieur, for we are wasting his time by forcing him to witness a scene which can hardly interest him."
The young woman was very generous to apologize to Chamoureau, for he had been paying no attention to their conversation for some time. He was thinking only of his clothes,—of the new coat left at Freluchon's, which Madame Monin did not bring back.
"I must have my coat to call on Madame de Sainte-Suzanne," he was saying to himself; "for I certainly will not appear there in a sack-coat."