. The mother looked up into her face and said:

"No, it is nothing, nothing, only that"--turning her head from side to
side with a slow, emotional emphasis, "Miche Vignevielle is the
best--_best_ man on the good Lord's earth!"

Olive drew a chair close to her mother, sat down and took the little
yellow hands into her own white lap, and looked tenderly into her eyes.
Madame Delphine felt herself yielding; she must make a show of telling
something:

"He sent you those birds!"

The girl drew her face back a little. The little woman turned away,
trying in vain to hide her tearful smile, and they laughed together,
Olive mingling a daughter's fond kiss with her laughter.

"There is something else," she said, "and you shall tell me."

"Yes," replied Madame Delphine, "only let me get composed."

But she did not get so. Later in the morning she came to Olive with the
timid yet startling proposal that they would do what they could to
brighten up the long-neglected front room. Olive was mystified and
troubled, but consented, and thereupon the mother's spirits rose.

The work began, and presently ensued all the thumping, the trundling,
the lifting and letting down, the raising and swallowing of dust, and
the smells of turpentine, brass, pumice and woollen rags that go to
characterize a housekeeper's _emeute_; and still, as the work
progressed, Madame Delphine's heart grew light, and her little black
eyes sparkled.

"We like a clean parlor, my daughter, even though no one is ever coming
to see us, eh?" she said, as entering the apartment she at last sat
down, late in the afternoon. She had put on her best attire.

Olive was not there to reply. The mother called but got no answer. She
rose with an uneasy heart, and met her a few steps beyond the door that
opened into the garden, in a path which came up from an old latticed
bower. Olive was approaching slowly, her face pale and wild. There was
an agony of hostile dismay in the look, and the trembling and appealing
tone with which, taking the frightened mother's cheeks between her
palms, she said:

"_Ah! ma mere, qui vini 'ci ce soir_?"--Who is coming here this evening?

"Why, my dear child, I was just saying, we like a clean"--

But the daughter was desperate:

"Oh, tell me, my mother, _who_ is coming?"

"My darling, it is our blessed friend, Miche Vignevielle!"

"To see me?" cried the girl.

"Yes."

"Oh, my mother, what have you done?"

"Why, Olive, my child,"