Page:The fortunes of Fifi (IA fortunesoffifi00seawiala).pdf/145

 ticket. Fifi, you are not very old, but you are of the sort which does not change, and you will be Fifi as long as you live. You can not he happy away from Cartouche and the theater and Toto—unfeeling wretch that you are, to let Toto be torn from you! So the only thing to do is to return to love and work. If you spend all your money Louis Bourcet would not marry you to save your life, and then you can go back to the theater and make Cartouche marry you. Oh, how simple it is! Stupid, stupid Fifi, that you did not think of this before!" And, throbbing with happiness at the emancipation before her, Fifi rose and dressed herself. She was distracted by the riotous singing of the robins in the one solitary tree in the courtyard. Heretofore the little birds had been mute and half frozen, but this morning, in the warm spring sun, they sang in ecstasy.

Fifi not only felt different, but she actually looked so; and the blitheness which shone in her eyes when she went to ask Madame Bourcet if she might have Angéline, the sour maid-of-all-work, to go with her to the shops that morning might have awakened suspicion in most minds. But not in Madame Bourcet's. Fifi slyly let drop some