Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/353



May, 1906.

Marise started up the front stair-way she saw Biron emerging on the run from the foot of the servants' stairway, his apron half-off, a net marketing-bag in his hand. His broad, red face looked cross and anxious. Something must have gone wrong. She turned back, meeting him in front of the concierge's door.

"Oh, Mademoiselle, God be praised you're back in time. Desolation and ruin! The sole has turned—it has been so hot to-day. I swear on my soul as a Christian it was fresh when I got it—unless that blackguard Gagnan changed.…"

When Biron turned his torrent of objurgation on the trades-people who sold him eatables there was no stopping him. Marise cut in now.

"Were you going out for another? Do you want me to go?"

"Yes, yes—only not for a sole—there wouldn't be one left—and the dinner was planned for sole!"

He ground his teeth, white and sound as a wolf's, "I could send Mélanie if she had the intelligence of an angle-worm—and yet to leave her with my sauce till I get back—I was right in the midst of a sauce piquante for the …"

He turned as if to rush back upstairs, distractedly, and turned again as if to rush distractedly out into the street.

Marise put out her hand for the market-bag and spoke with the peremptory decision that was always necessary to unloosen Biron from his temperamental tangles.

"Go right back to your sauce, Biron. I'll have the fish here in five minutes. And have plenty of onion in that sauce. My father thought the last not well-balanced, too much vinegar. He likes his sauces suave." 345