thin her and she
leaped to her feet. "Bah!" she said to herself, "I am a baby. It was
only a dream,--the cure has told us not to be afraid of them,--I snap
my fingers at that old Bergeron with her stupid countersigns,--_je
m'en fricasse_! But, my ring--my ring? I have dropped it, that's all,
while I was groping around the room in my sleep. After a while I will
look for it and find it."

She washed her face and smoothed her hair and walked into the kitchen.
Breakfast was ready and the old woman was grumbling because it had
been kept waiting.

"You are lazy," she said, "a love-sick woman is good for nothing. Your
eyes are red. You look bad. You have seen something. A countersign!"

She peered at the girl curiously, the wrinkles on her yellow face
deepening like the cracks in drying clay, and her thin lips working as
if they mumbled a delicious morsel,--a foretaste of the terrible.

"Let me alone with your silly talk," cried Toinette gaily. "I am
hungry. Besides, I have a headache. You must take care of the store
this morning. I will stay here. Prosper will come home to-day."

"_Frivolante_," said the old woman, with her sharp eyes fixed on the
girl's left hand, "why do you think that? Where is your wedding-ring?"

"I dropped it," replied Toinette, drawing back her hand quickly and
letting it fall under the table-cloth, "it must be somewhere in my
room."

"She dropped it," repeated the old woman, with wagging head, "_tiens!_
what a pity! The ring that not even death should take from her
finger,--she dropped it! But that is a bad sign,--the worst of all,--a
countersign of----"

"Will you go? Old babbler," cried Toinette, springing up in anger, "I
tell you to go to the store. I am mistress in this house."

_Tante_ Bergeron clumped sullenly away, muttering, "A mistress without
a wedding-ring! Oh, la-la, la-la! There's a big misery in that."

Toinette rolled up her sleeves and washed the dishes. She tried to
sing a little at her work, because she knew that Prosper liked it, but
the notes seemed to stick in her throat. She wiped her eyes with the
hem of her apron, and went upstairs, bare-armed, to search for her
ring.

She looked and felt in every corner of the room, took up the
rag-carpet rugs and shook them, moved every chair and the big chest of
drawers and the wash-stand, pulled the covers and the pillows and the
mattress off the bed and threw them on the floor. When she had
finished the room looked as if the