Page:The fortunes of Fifi (IA fortunesoffifi00seawiala).pdf/102

 *tracted Fifi's attention from the nightly game of cribbage and made her count worse than ever.

And so Fifi began to live, for the first time, without love and without work. Only the other day, she remembered, she had been hungry and hard-worked and happy: and now she was neither hungry nor hard-worked, but assuredly, she was not happy.

She had not seen Cartouche since the day he left her and her boxes in the Rue de l'Echelle, and had walked off with Toto, and, incidentally, with all of Fifi's happiness. She had directed him to come to see her often, and he had not once been near her! At this thought Fifi clenched her little fists with rage: Cartouche was her own—her very own—and how dared he treat her in this manner?

In the beginning, every day Fifi expected him, and would run to the window twenty times in an afternoon. But he neither came nor wrote. After a while, Fifi's heart became sore and she burst out before Madame Bourcet and Louis:

"Cartouche has not come to see me; he has not even written."

"But, my dear child," remonstrated Madame