Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (Polish-Greek-Belgian-Hungarian).djvu/87

Rh He paid no attention to her mute reproach.

"In fact," he went on, "the dinner is n't fit to eat to-day."

"You Ve eaten it, though."

Florou was in the habit of resorting to this argument as unanswerable. Usually her master laughed and said that he had eaten his dinner because he was hungry, and not because it was good. To-day, however, her phrase irritated him, less on account of the words themselves, than from an inward consciousness that this day of all others he had no right to complain of her culinary art.

In his vexation he forgot how he had planned to lead up to the subject of his marriage, and had to finish his dinner in silence; but while Florou was carrying the dishes away, he thought of a new pretext for coming back to the absorbing topic. He noticed for the first time a hole in the tablecloth that had been there a long time.

"See there!" said he, putting his finger through it. "My house needs a mistress,—there 's no other remedy for such a state of things. I must have a wife!"

Florou shrugged her shoulders as though she thought her master had lost his wits.

"Do you understand me? I must get married."

The old woman smiled.