“Well then, you ought to have lighted it for him, if you have that on your conscience!”
“Hold your tongue, Hildegarde; you’re very unreasonable to-night, you have something bad to say about everybody. You find fault because Monsieur Malberg has a yellow negro to work for him, and you don’t seem to know that that is very distinguished. Swell people always have colored servants in their employ.”
“It’s a miserable fashion. But still, if that miserable Pingo or Ponceau—I never know what his name is—was only agreeable.”
“Pongo!”
“Oh! what a dog of a name! Pongo! But he never talks, the blackamoor; or else he talks to himself, and says things that I don’t understand; I believe that he talks Morocco!”
“Come, Hildegarde, it’s almost twelve o’clock; go to bed, that’s the best thing you can do.”
“Everybody hasn’t come in.”
“Yes they have, everybody except little Georget, who lives up under the roof, with his mother.—By the way, how is the poor woman to-day?”
“Not very well; she’s had more fainting fits this afternoon, and I thought she was going to put out her gas.”
“And her son hasn’t come home, at midnight! that’s what I call a ne’er-do-well, a downright scamp! Hildegarde, heaven didn’t give us any children, and I give thanks for it in my heart; because they aren’t always honey for parents, and often absinthe rules the roost, as I see in the case of Mère Georget!”