She played her game of solitaire rapidly, impatiently, and always won; for she never hesitated to cheat to get out of a tight place, or into a favorable one, cheating with the quickness of a flash, and forgetting it the moment afterward.

Mr. Horace was as old as she, but he looked much younger, although his dress and appearance betrayed no evidence of an effort in that direction.  Whenever his friend cheated, he would invariably call her attention to it; and as usual she would shrug her shoulders, and say, “Bah! lose a game for a card!” and pursue the conversation.

He happened to mention mushrooms—­fresh mushrooms.  She threw down her cards before the words were out of his mouth, and began to call, “Jules!  Jules!” Mr. Horace pulled the bell-cord, but madame was too excitable for that means of communication.  She ran into the antechamber, and put her head over the banisters, calling, “Jules!  Jules!” louder and louder.  She might have heard Jules’s slippered feet running from the street into the corridor and up-stairs, had she not been so deaf.  He appeared at the door.

“But where have you been?  Here I have been raising the house a half-hour, calling you.  You have been in the street.  I am sure you have been in the street.”

“Madame is very much mistaken,” answered Jules, with resentful dignity.  He had taken off his white apron of waiter, and was disreputable in all the shabbiness of his attire as cook.  “When madame forbids me to go into the street, I do not go into the street.  I was in the kitchen; I had fallen asleep.  What does madame desire?” smiling benevolently.

“What is this I hear?  Fresh mushrooms in the market!”

“Eh, madame?”

“Fresh mushrooms in the market, and you have not brought me any!”

“Madame, there are fresh mushrooms everywhere in the market,” waving his hand to show their universality.

“Everybody is eating them—­”

“Old Pomponnette,” Jules continued, “only this morning offered me a plate, piled up high, for ten cents.”

“Idiot!  Why did you not buy them?”

“If madame had said so; but madame did not say so.  Madame said, ’Soup, Jules; carrots, rice,’” counting on his fingers.

“And the gumbo?”

“I have explained that that was an accident.  Madame said ‘Soup,’” enumerating his menu again; “madame never once said mushrooms.”

“But how could I know there were mushrooms in the market?  Do I go to market?”

“That is it!” and Jules smiled at the question thus settled.

“If you had told me there were mushrooms in the market—­” pursued madame, persisting in treating Jules as a reasonable being.

“Why did not madame ask me?  If madame had asked me, surely I would have told madame.  Yesterday Caesar brought them to the door—­a whole bucketful for twenty-five cents.  I had to shut the door in his face to get rid of him,” triumphantly.