“Also, I adore your mother,” declared Henriette. “She makes me forget my misfortune in not having my own mother. She is so good!”
“We are all like that in our family,” put in George.
“Really,” laughed the wife. “Well, anyhow—the last time that we went down in the country with her—you had gone out, I don’t know where you had gone—”
“To see the sixteenth-century chest,” suggested the other.
“Oh, yes,” laughed Henriette; “your famous chest!” (You must excuse this little family chatter of theirs—they were so much in love with each other!)
“Don’t let’s talk about that,” objected George. “You were saying—?”
“You were not there. The nurse was out at mass, I think—”
“Or at the wine merchant’s! Go on, go on.”
“Well, I was in the little room, and mother dear thought she was all alone with Gervaise. I was listening; she was talking to the baby—all sorts of nonsense, pretty little words—stupid, if you like, but tender. I wanted to laugh, and at the same time I wanted to weep.”
“Perhaps she called her ‘my dear little Savior’?”