Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/51

Rh of Madame. As plain Mademoiselle, with a daughter, you must take her or leave her. And, somehow, all this has not seemed to make the faintest difference to her clientèle, not even to the primmest of the English. I can't think of one of them who did not treat her with deference, like her, and recommend her house.

But her house they need recommend no more, for she has sold it. Last spring, when I was in Paris, she told me she was about to do so. "Ouf! I have lived with my nose to the grindstone long enough. I am going to 'retire.'" What money she had saved from season to season, she explained, she had entrusted to her friend Baron C * * * * for speculation. "He is a wizard, and so I am a rich woman. I shall have an income of something like three thousand pounds, mon cher! Oh, we will roll in it. I have had ten bad years ten hateful years. You don't know how I have hated it all, this business, this drudgery, this cut-and-dried, methodical existence—moi, enfant de Bohème! But, enfin, it was obligatory. Now we will change all that. Nous reviendrons a nos premiéres amours. I shall have ten good years—ten years of barefaced pleasure. Then—I will range myself—perhaps. There is the darlingest little house for sale, a sort of chàlet, built of red brick, with pointed windows and things, in the Rue de Lisbonne. I shall buy it—furnish it—decorate it. Oh, you will see. I shall have my carriage, I shall have toilets, I shall entertain, I shall give dinners—olala! No more boarders, no more bores, cares, responsibilities. Only, my friends and—life! I feel like one emerging from ten years in the galleys, ten years of penal servitude. To the Pension Childe—bonsoir!"

"That's all very well for you," her listener complained sombrely. "But for me? Where shall I stop when I come to Paris?"

"With me. You shall be my guest. I will kill you if you ever