“Terrible!” exclaimed Nita, as Madame gripped another article of apparel and beat it with her mallet as though it had been the skull of her bitterest enemy, while soap-suds and water spurted from it as if they had been that enemy’s brains.
“And she washes, I believe, for our hotel,” said Emma, with a slightly troubled expression. Perhaps a thought of her work-box and buttons flashed across her mind at the moment.
“You are right,” said Lewis, with a pleased smile.
“I heard Antoine say to Gillie, the other day, that his wife washed a large portion of the hotel linen. No doubt some of ours is amongst it. Indeed I am sure of it,” he added, with a look of quiet gravity, as Madame Grennon seized another article, swished it through the water, caused it to resound on the plank, and scrubbed it powerfully with soap; “that a what’s-’is-name, belongs to me. I know it by the cut of its collar. Formerly, I used to know it chiefly by its fair and fragile texture. I shall know it hereafter as an amazing illustration of the truth of the proverb, that no one knows what he can stand till he is tried. The blows which she is at present delivering to it with her mallet, are fast driving all preconceived notions in regard to linen out of my head. Scrubbing it, as she does now, with a hard brush, against the asperities of the rough plank, and then twisting it up like a roly-poly prior to swishing it through the water a second time, would once have induced me to doubt the strength of delicate mother-of-pearl buttons and fine white thread. I shall doubt no longer.”
As he said so, Madame Grennon chanced to look up, and caught sight of the strangers. She rose at once, and, forsaking her tub, advanced to meet them, the curly-haired daughter following close at her heels, for, wherever her mother went she followed, and whatever her mother did she imitated.
The object of the visit was soon explained, and the good woman led the visitors into her hut where Baptist Le Croix chanced to be at the time.
There was something very striking in the appearance of this man. He was a tall fine-looking fellow, a little past the prime of life, but with a frame whose great muscular power was in no degree abated. His face was grave, good-natured, and deeply sunburnt; but there was a peculiarly anxious look about the eyes, and a restless motion in them, as if he were constantly searching for something which he could not find.
He willingly undertook to conduct his friend’s wife and child to the residence of their relative.
On leaving the hut to return to Chamouni, Madame Grennon accompanied her visitors a short way, and Nita took occasion, while expressing admiration of Baptist’s appearance, to comment on his curiously anxious look.
“Ah! Mademoiselle,” said Madame, with a half sad look, “the poor man is taken up with a strange notion—some people call it a delusion—that gold is to be found somewhere here in the mountains.”