Jean, who had a turn for the melodramatic, tugged despairingly with both hands at his hair, Perine, meanwhile, intent upon the soup, bent forward and stirred it.

“Soup for mother and Perine,” she muttered.

“What red hands she has!” continued Jean with a grimace, “and I hate to hear her call Marie, mother.  But it’s just Marie all over.  She never could see a poor wretch, were it only a hunted rat, but she must take it up, and give herself all the trouble in the world, when she might have left it alone.  She was just the same as a little girl, I see her now, in her little round cap and woollen frock, scattering food for the frozen-out birds in the hard winters.  Such a pretty, rosy-faced little thing as she was, and they all so fond of her!  I recollect taking her to school in my wooden sledge, and she—­What’s the girl about now?  Why—­what dog has bitten her!  She has taken my tobacco from the shelf—­she—­not—!  Yes, by heaven, she has poured it all into the soup!”

“Perine heard mother say she wanted something to make the soup good,” laughed the girl, nodding her head, and quite unconscious that behind her the enraged Jean was violently shaking his fist.

“Horror!  To see tobacco, dinner, everything ruined by that creature without being able to say a word!  It is simply atrocious of Marie to go away, leave her to do all this mischief, and then expect me to put up with it!  My pipe, my one comfort!  Ah-h-h-h! if only I could box her ears and stop her from grinning away as if she had done a clever thing!”

It was at this moment that Marie returned, carrying in her arms a cabbage.  At the door, seeing the angry and distracted gesture of her husband, she paused in consternation.

“But what then?  Has anything gone wrong?  The soup—­Perine, you unfortunate child, have you touched the soup?”

The girl pointed with triumph to where the tobacco had been.

“Good stuff, mother,” she said, nodding.

“The tobacco!  You have it put in!—­Oh, my poor friend, no wonder you are angry!” said Madame Didier in an undertone.

“Out with her!” cried her husband in a fierce whisper.

“Perine, Perine, and I have warned you so often to touch nothing without leave!  Now you have spoilt the soup, and we can have no dinner.”

There was this inconvenience in the quick remorse which seized the girl when Marie reproved her, however gently, that she broke at once into sobs, which were as clumsy and unmanageable as her hands and feet.  Jean disliked them intensely, and he now made frantic signs to his wife that she was to be sent away.  “But she is as hungry as we are,” pleaded Marie, “and see, M. Plon has given me a cabbage, I can manage something.”

He was, however, inexorable; and his wife, always afraid of his committing some imprudence, though on the whole Jean might be trusted to take care of himself, said sorrowfully: