"Horror! To see tobacco, dinner, everything ruined by that creature without being able to say a word! It is simply atrocious of Marie to go away, leave her to do all this mischief, and then expect me to put up with it! My pipe, my one comfort! Ah-h-h-h! if only I could box her ears and stop her from grinning away as if she had done a clever thing!"
It was at this moment that Marie returned, carrying in her arms a cabbage. At the door, seeing the angry and distracted gesture of her husband, she paused in consternation.
"But what then? Has anything gone wrong? The soup—Périne, you unfortunate child, have you touched the soup?"
The girl pointed with triumph to where the tobacco had been.
"Good stuff, mother," she said, nodding.
"The tobacco! You have it put in!--Oh, my poor friend, no wonder you are angry!" said Madame Didier in an undertone.
"Out with her!" cried her husband in a fierce whisper.
"Périne, Périne, and I have warned you so often to touch nothing without leave! Now you have spoilt the soup, and we can have no dinner."
There was this inconvenience in the quick remorse which seized the girl when Marie reproved her, however gently, that she broke at once into sobs, which were as clumsy and unmanageable as her hands and feet. Jean disliked them intensely, and he now made frantic signs to his wife that she was to be sent away. "But she is as hungry as we are," pleaded Marie, "and see, M. Plon has given me a cabbage, I can manage something."
He was, however, inexorable; and his wife, always afraid of his committing some imprudence, though on the whole Jean might be trusted to take care of himself, said sorrowfully: