Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/54

 The waste-paper basket was too open, they would fall right through on the floor, and what a fuss there would be over that! Oh, there was the fireplace, if you put things way back of the sticks, Jeanne didn't see them.

She was just straightening up from reaching back of the wood, when Father came in. He said, "Hello, kid," and she answered, "Hello, Poppa." They did this for a kind of a joke, to be extra American when Maman couldn't hear them.

Father sat down on the edge of the bed, making a big dent in the fluffed-up crimson, eider-down quilt, which Jeanne rounded so carefully each morning, and which she never let anybody disturb. Not, of course, that Jeanne would dare to say anything to Father, le patron. She would only grumble in Basque, under her breath, and Marise would feel her opinion of Americans going down even lower than it was. Marise could always feel everybody's opinions as they went up and down. And how she did hate to feel them going down, anybody's about anything! She always tried to fix it so they would go up. She now planned to fluff the édredon to a puff again, after Father had gone back. She didn't say anything about it to Father. You never did, about that sort of thing, even Maman didn't, although it made her awfully provoked not to have Father care, and she always said a lot afterwards. Marise didn't even say anything to him about the white down that would be sure to work through the cover of the édredon and get on his clothes. Father wouldn't care if it did. There were such lots of things Father didn't care about. But Maman would. She must remember to brush him off before he went to the salon.

"Having a good time?" asked Father slowly, the way he did, that let you see how he knew perfectly well you weren't.

"Not so very," she answered.

"Neither am I," he returned, "though you needn't mention it to Momma." There were always a great many things that were not to be mentioned to Maman, and a lot of quite other things that were not to be mentioned to Father, and Isabelle told her things she didn't want Jeaime to know, and everything that Jeanne said was not to be mentioned either to Father or