“Plums. Do you mean to say that you don’t know this dish?”
“Mon Dieu! no, I never saw it before. At my nurse’s we never ate it.”
Madame Célival laughed heartily.
“At your nurse’s!” she repeated; “that is lovely! an excellent joke! One would think, to hear you, that you had remained out at nurse to this day.”
Chérubin bit his lips; he thought that he had made a foolish speech, and was overjoyed to find that she took it for a good joke. He accepted the plums which Madame Célival offered him.
“Well!” said the lovely widow, after a moment, “how do you like what you never had at your nurse’s?”
“Very well! delicious!”
“With pleasure.”
Madame Célival served him again to plums, and he said, as he ate them: