is indecision lead him to favor Madame Chebe as
they sat together in the evening!

"I don't know anything about linen; but when you come to broadcloth, I
understand that. Only, if I go into broadcloths I must have a man to
travel; for the best kinds come from Sedan and Elbeuf. I say nothing
about calicoes; summer is the time for them. As for tulle, that's out of
the question; the season is too far advanced."

He usually brought his discourse to a close with the words:

"The night will bring counsel--let us go to bed."

And to bed he would go, to his wife's great relief.

After three or four months of this life, M. Chebe began to tire of it.
The pains in the head, the dizzy fits gradually returned. The quarter was
noisy and unhealthy: besides, business was at a standstill. Nothing was
to be done in any line, broadcloths, tissues, or anything else.

It was just at the period of this new crisis that "Mademoiselle Planus,
my sister," called to speak about Sidonie.

The old maid had said to herself on the way, "I must break it gently."
But, like all shy people, she relieved herself of her burden in the first
words she spoke after entering the house.

It was a stunning blow. When she heard the accusation made against her
daughter, Madame Chebe rose in indignation. No one could ever make her
believe such a thing. Her poor Sidonie was the victim of an infamous
slander.

M. Chebe, for his part, adopted a very lofty tone, with significant
phrases and motions of the head, taking everything to himself as was his
custom. How could any one suppose that his child, a Chebe, the daughter
of an honorable business man known for thirty years on the street, was
capable of Nonsense!

Mademoiselle Planus insisted. It was a painful thing to her to be
considered a gossip, a hawker of unsavory stories. But they had
incontestable proofs. It was no longer a secret to anybody.

"And even suppose it were true," cried M. Chebe, furious at her
persistence. "Is it for us to worry about it? Our daughter is married.
She lives a long way from her parents. It is for her husband, who is much
older than she, to advise and guide her. Does he so much as think of
doing it?"

Upon that the little man began to inveigh against his son-in-law, that
cold-blooded Swiss, who passed his life in his office devising machines,
refused to accompany his wife into society, and preferred his
old-bachelor habits, his pipe and his brewery, to everything else.

Y