"Why do you keep on saying: 'Poor child'?" asked Jacqueline uneasily. "I don't want to be a poor child. I want—I want so much to be happy!"
"That is why I say: 'Poor child!'"
Jacqueline sulked for a little. But it did not last long. Marthe laughed at her so kindly that she was disarmed. She kissed her, pretending to be angry. But in their hearts children of that age are secretly flattered by predictions of suffering in later life, which is so far away. When it is afar off there is a halo of poetry round sorrow, and we dread nothing so much as a dull, even life.
Jacqueline did not notice that her aunt's face was growing paler and paler. She observed that Marthe was going out less and less, but she attributed it to her stay-at-home disposition, about which she used often to tease her. Once or twice, when she called, she had met the doctor coming out. She had asked her aunt:
"Are you ill?"
Marthe replied:
"It's nothing."
But now she had even given up her weekly dinner at the Langeais'.
Jacqueline was hurt, and went and reproached her bitterly.
"My dear," said Marthe gently, "I am rather tired."
But Jacqueline would not listen to anything. That was a poor sort of excuse!