“Mon Dieu! I should die if I were alone a single day!”
“So you don’t like reading?”
“Yes, I do, for a moment or two, in bed; but not long at a time; it tires me.”
“And music?”
“I play and sing only when someone is listening to me.”
“Drawing?”
“Oh! that was all right at boarding-school! I mean to have a little theatre on my estate, and we will have theatricals there; that’s great fun. I used to act often at boarding-school. I was particularly fond of the parts in which I changed dresses.”
“What a child you are!”
“What would you have? one must pass the time somehow. If I had nothing but my husband to amuse me, great heaven! where should we be? A man who thinks of nothing but figures and exchange and heaven knows what. These business men are very disagreeable.”
The ladies, having turned into another path, found themselves in the neighborhood of Monsieur Monin, who had stopped and seemed to be in a sort of trance before a plum tree laden with very large fruit. At sight of the ladies he took off his hat and muttered: “How’s your—” But he did not finish the sentence, because he remembered that he had already paid his respects to them in the salon; so he turned and pointed to the tree, saying: “That tree bears very fine fruit.”