“Isn’t it a bore I’ve got to go out at three o’clock?” she muttered.  “It is a nuisance!”

Just then Zoe came in to say that lunch was on the table.  They went into the dining room, where an old lady was already seated at table.  She had not taken her hat off, and she wore a dark dress of an indecisive color midway between puce and goose dripping.  Nana did not seem surprised at sight of her.  She simply asked her why she hadn’t come into the bedroom.

“I heard voices,” replied the old lady.  “I thought you had company.”

Mme Maloir, a respectable-looking and mannerly woman, was Nana’s old friend, chaperon and companion.  Mme Lerat’s presence seemed to fidget her at first.  Afterward, when she became aware that it was Nana’s aunt, she looked at her with a sweet expression and a die-away smile.  In the meantime Nana, who averred that she was as hungry as a wolf, threw herself on the radishes and gobbled them up without bread.  Mme Lerat had become ceremonious; she refused the radishes as provocative of phlegm.  By and by when Zoe had brought in the cutlets Nana just chipped the meat and contented herself with sucking the bones.  Now and again she scrutinized her old friend’s hat out of the corners of her eyes.

“It’s the new hat I gave you?” she ended by saying.

“Yes, I made it up,” murmured Mme Maloir, her mouth full of meat.

The hat was smart to distraction.  In front it was greatly exaggerated, and it was adorned with a lofty feather.  Mme Maloir had a mania for doing up all her hats afresh; she alone knew what really became her, and with a few stitches she could manufacture a toque out of the most elegant headgear.  Nana, who had bought her this very hat in order not to be ashamed of her when in her company out of doors, was very near being vexed.

“Push it up, at any rate,” she cried.

“No, thank you,” replied the old lady with dignity.  “It doesn’t get in my way; I can eat very comfortably as it is.”

After the cutlets came cauliflowers and the remains of a cold chicken.  But at the arrival of each successive dish Nana made a little face, hesitated, sniffed and left her plateful untouched.  She finished her lunch with the help of preserve.

Dessert took a long time.  Zoe did not remove the cloth before serving the coffee.  Indeed, the ladies simply pushed back their plates before taking it.  They talked continually of yesterday’s charming evening.  Nana kept rolling cigarettes, which she smoked, swinging up and down on her backward-tilted chair.  And as Zoe had remained behind and was lounging idly against the sideboard, it came about that the company were favored with her history.  She said she was the daughter of a midwife at Bercy who had failed in business.  First of all she had taken service with a dentist and after that with an insurance agent, but neither place suited her, and she thereupon enumerated, not without a certain amount