“Hola!” cried a shrill voice, speaking in French, fluent, but oddly accented. “Who is here? The Princess desires that the English Mademoiselle will descend this evening.”
“Very good,” the girl in the window replied pleasantly. “At the same hour, Joséphine?”
“Why not, Mademoiselle?” A trim maid, with a plain face and the faultless figure of a Pole, came a few steps into the room. “But you are alone?”
“The children are walking. I stayed at home.”
“To be alone? As if I did not understand that! To be alone—it is the luxury of the rich.”
The girl nodded. “None but a Pole would have thought of that,” she said.
“Ah, the crafty English Miss!” the maid retorted. “How she flatters! Perhaps she needs a touch of the tongs to-night? Or the loan of a pair of red-heeled shoes, worn no more than thrice by the Princess—and with the black which is convenable for Mademoiselle, oh, so neat! Of the ancien régime, absolutely!”
The other laughed. “The ancien régime, Joséphine—and this!” she replied, with a gesture that embraced the room, the pallets, her own bed. “A curled head—and this! You are truly a cabbage——”
“But Mademoiselle descends!”
“A cabbage of—foolishness!”