"We'll promise you," cried Betsey, in eager curiosity. "Go ahead."
"Cela étant----"
"No French now, please. Take your time, but put it all into English."
Annette settled herself in her chair, clasping her hands in her lap with a long breath; while her eyes rolled abstractedly in her head in search, no doubt, of the English words to convey her meaning. "Madame is mariée as me. She will know la jalousie, which carries ze good vife for son époux."
"Auntie!" cried Betsey in uncontrollable hilarity. "Were you ever so jealous of Uncle Dionysius that you had to carry him about with you? It would be more likely to be the other way. It is you, I should say, would want watching. He! he!"
"Betsey," said Aunt Judy austerely, for in truth her sense of propriety was outraged, "you surprise me. No! Mrs. Bruneau, I am not jealous. I have no occasion."
"Madame ees heureuse; but me--l'épouse who loves as me, vill have des doutes from time in time. Zere arrive von night--it was a hot night of summer, ven ze vindow ver leff open, and I do not sleep well, and zen sound au dessous de la fenêtre--"
"Say window, and go on."
"I hear ze cry of a bébé, I raise myself and go down, and behold! on ze stoop it were laid. And la jalousie she demand of me 'pour-quoi at ze door of my Jean Bruneau?' And I réponds qu'oui, it is too evident. And I say in myself that no! It shall not be that the enfante d'autrui shall eat the croûte of mes enfants; and for Jean Bruneau, he shall of it never know. And then I carry to the porte of Mees Stanley, and I sound, and hide myself till I shall see it carried in ze house. And now, behold, the reward of my bienfaisance! Pierre, à la prison! And he has loffe her since long time. Peut-être sa sœur! Oh! My boy so innocent, in sin so mortal, and not to know! But how to hinder?"
"And the child is no relation to them at all? Well--I call it oudacious. Auntie, did you ever hear anything like it? A brat like Muriel, not a drop's blood to them in the world, to be pampered up there in sealskin and velvet, while I, their own cousin, am glad to dress myself in a suit of homespun."