leste began
to laugh in her impudent way: "What a lot of fibs you told her! I don't
believe that her child so much as caught a cold," she exclaimed.

La Couteau began by assuming a dignified air: "Say that I'm a liar at
once. The child isn't well, I assure you."

The maid's gayety only increased at this. "Well now, you are really
comical, putting on such airs with me. I know you, remember, and I know
what is meant when the tip of your nose begins to wriggle."

"The child is quite puny," repeated her friend, more gently.

"Oh! I can believe that. All the same I should like to see the doctor's
prescriptions, and the soap and the sugar. But, you know, I don't care
a button about the matter. As for that little Madame Menoux, it's here
to-day and gone to-morrow. She has her business, and I have mine. And
you, too, have yours, and so much the better if you get as much out of
it as you can."

But La Couteau changed the conversation by asking the maid if she could
not give her a drop of something to drink, for night travelling did
upset her stomach so. Thereupon Celeste, with a laugh, took a bottle
half-full of malaga and a box of biscuits from the bottom of a cupboard.
This was her little secret store, stolen from the still-room. Then, as
the other expressed a fear that her mistress might surprise them, she
made a gesture of insolent contempt. Her mistress! Why, she had her nose
in her basins and perfumery pots, and wasn't at all likely to call till
she had fixed herself up so as to look pretty.

"There are only the children to fear," added Celeste; "that Gaston and
that Lucie, a couple of brats who are always after one because their
parents never trouble about them, but let them come and play here or in
the kitchen from morning till night. And I don't dare lock this door,
for fear they should come rapping and kicking at it."

When, by way of precaution, she had glanced down the passage and they
had both seated themselves at table, they warmed and spoke out their
minds, soon reaching a stage of easy impudence and saying everything
as if quite unconscious how abominable it was. While sipping her wine
Celeste asked for news of the village, and La Couteau spoke the brutal
truth, between two biscuits. It was at the Vimeux' house that the
servant's last child, born in La Rouche's den, had died a fortnight
after arriving at Rougemont, and the Vimeux, who were more or less her
cousins, had sent her their friendly remembrances