I am just going to see that my fire hasn't gone
out."
In this way Francoise and my aunt made a critical valuation between them,
in the course of these morning sessions, of the earliest happenings of the
day. But sometimes these happenings assumed so mysterious or so alarming
an air that my aunt felt she could not wait until it was time for
Francoise to come upstairs, and then a formidable and quadruple peal would
resound through the house.
"But, Mme. Octave, it is not time for your pepsin," Francoise would begin.
"Are you feeling faint?"
"No, thank you, Francoise," my aunt would reply, "that is to say, yes; for
you know well that there is very seldom a time when I don't feel faint;
one day I shall pass away like Mme. Rousseau, before I know where I am;
but that is not why I rang. Would you believe that I have just seen, as
plainly as I see you, Mme. Goupil with a little girl I didn't know at all.
Run and get a pennyworth of salt from Camus. It's not often that Theodore
can't tell you who a person is."
"But that must be M. Pupin's daughter," Francoise would say, preferring to
stick to an immediate explanation, since she had been perhaps twice
already into Camus's shop that morning.
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