I of course agreed.
Mme. Smilowicz received us in a tiny room—bachelor’s lodgings on the fourth floor—amongst a confused medley of boxes and mattresses and lumber of various kinds. She began by asking us to speak low, not to disturb Andy, who was then asleep: then she showed him to me: a one-year-old baby, asleep in a cradle. It had a tilted Mongolian nose, the result, no doubt, of the mother’s having so often seen the type.
I paid it several compliments, of the What-a-fine-baby sort, and had not the least fear of being suspected of irony.
For the rest, Mme. Smilowicz has not the appearance of a “youthful mother”; she is a thin black-avised little woman in a dark gown, with a double eye-glass on her nose.
She poured some spirits of wine into the little pan for heating the kettle, and while it was burning itself out, she said, very low:
“My dear Madame, people say that women are weaker than men. But they do not in the least take into account all the strength that we expend over the children; just as if it were uselessly wasted! But furthermore, and setting this aside, let any one of them try to go through what I have undergone. With a child one year old, my dear Madame! in that bleak ice-bound land! and then, on our way home, having to do everything, my husband in wretched health.... And here again, look you! notwithstanding all this work on my hands, I have managed to translate thus much: and now we shall be able to sell it somewhere. Joseph dear, have you been able to see the publisher to-day?”
She pointed to a heap of papers, written in a fine female hand. Her husband smiled at me proudly.
As soon as the spirits were burnt out, Mme. Smilowicz worked the piston with swift strokes, pumping up a stream of gas, while her husband held a match to light it as it issued forth. A loud droning sound was heard, and a slight smell of naphtha was discernible.
“Won’t the noise wake little Andy?” I queried, with sham solicitude.
“No, no, he is accustomed to it now.”