ouise. She was able
to answer:

"M--Mr. Remy."

"Ramy?--oh, lord! Got the job with His Tonsils? Well, you won't keep it
long. They're meaner'n three balls, see? Rent their room up here and
chip in with eleven. Their girls don't never stay. Well, I got to step,
or the Sooprintendent'll be borin' my ear. Well--so long!"

But Louise had fled down the stairs. "His Tonsils" rang in her ears.
What blasphemy! What sacrilege! She could scarcely pretend to listen to
Mme. Remy's first instructions.

The household _was_ parsimonious. Louise washed the caterer's dishes--he
made a reduction in his price. Thus she learned that a late breakfast
took the place of luncheon. She began to feel what this meant. The beds
had been made; but there was work enough. She helped Mme. Remy to sponge
a heap of faded finery--_her_ dresses. If they had been _his_ coats!
Louise bent her hot face over the tawdry silks and satins, and clasped
her parboiled little finger-tips over the wet sponge. At half-past three
Mme. Remy broke the silence.

"We must get ready for Musseer," she said. An ecstatic joy filled
Louise's being. The hour of her reward was at hand.

Getting ready for "Musseer" proved to be an appalling process. First
they brewed what Mme. Remy called a "teaze Ann." After the _tisane_, a
host of strange foreign drugs and cosmetics were marshalled in order.
Then water was set to heat on a gas-stove. Then a little table was
neatly set.

"Musseer has his dinner at half-past four," Madame explained. "I don't
take mine till he's laid down and I've got him off to the concert.
There, he's coming now. Sometimes he comes home pretty nervous. If he's
nervous, don't you go and make a fuss, do you hear, child?"

The door opened, and Musseer entered, wrapped in a huge frogged
overcoat. There was no doubt that he was nervous. He cast his hat upon
the floor, as if he were Jove dashing a thunderbolt. Fire flashed from
his eyes. He advanced upon his wife and thrust a newspaper in her
face--a little pinky sheet, a notorious blackmailing publication.

"Zees," he cried, "is your work!"

"What _is_ it now, Hipleet?" demanded Mme. Remy.

"Vot it ees?" shrieked the tenor. "It ees ze history of how zey have
heest me at Nice! It ees all zair--how I have been heest--in zis sacre
sheet--in zis handkairchif of infamy! And it ees you zat have told it to
zat devil of a Rastignac--_traitresse!_"

"Now, Hipleet," pleaded his wife, "if I can't learn enough Fren