shaking its dust off their shoes. Lavinia had a little nest of accumulated money, so was at ease in that respect. And when the evening of the following day the railway terminus at Sainteville was reached, the pleasant, smiling face of Mary Carimon was the first they saw outside the barrière. She must have been nearly forty now, but she did not look a day older than when she had left Buttermead. Miss Lavinia was a year or two older than Mary; Miss Ann a year or two younger.
“You must put up at the Hôtel des Princes,” remarked Madame Carimon. “It is the only really good one in the town. They won’t charge you too much; my husband has spoken to the landlady. And you must spend to-morrow with me.”
The hotel omnibus was waiting for them and other passengers, the luggage was piled on the roof, and Madame Carimon accompanied them to the hotel. A handsome hotel, the sisters thought; quite another thing from the one at Tours. Mary Carimon introduced them to the landlady, Madame Podevin, saw them seated down to tea and a cold fowl, and then left for the night.
With Sainteville the Miss Preens were simply charmed. It was a fresh, clean town, with wide streets, and good houses and old families, and some bright shops. The harbour was large, and the pier extended out to the open sea.
“I should like to live here!” exclaimed Miss Lavinia, sitting down at Madame Carimon’s, in a state of rapture. “I never saw such a nice town, or such a lovely market.”
They had been about all the morning with Madame Carimon. It was market-day, Wednesday. The market was held on the Grande Place; and the delicious butter, the eggs, the fresh vegetables, the flowers and the poultry, took Miss Lavinia’s heart by storm. Nancy was more taken with the picturesque market-women, in their white caps and long gold ear-rings. Other ladies were doing their marketing as well as Madame Carimon. She spoke to most of them, in French or in English, as the case might be. Under the able tuition of her husband, she talked French fluently now.
Madame Carimon’s habitation—very nice, small and compact—was in the Rue Pomme Cuite. The streets have queer names in some of these old French towns. It was near the college, which was convenient for Monsieur Carimon. Here they lived, with their elderly servant, Pauline. The same routine went on daily in the steady little domicile from year’s end to year’s end.
“Jules goes to the college at eight o’clock every week-day, after a cup of coffee and a petit pain,” said madame to her guests, “and he returns at five to dinner. He takes his déjeûner in the college at twelve, and I take mine alone at home. On Sundays he has no duty: we attend the French Protestant Church in a morning, dine at one o’clock, and go for a walk in the afternoon.”
“You have no children, Mary?”
Mary Carimon’s lively face turned sad as she answered: “There was one little one; she stayed with us six months, and then God took her. I wrote to you of it, you know, Lavinia. No, we have not any children. Best not, Jules says; and I agree with him. They might only leave us when we have learnt to love them; and that’s a trial hard to bear. Best as it is.”
“I’m sure I should never learn to speak French, though we lived here for a century,” exclaimed Miss Lavinia. “Only to hear you jabbering to your servant, Mary, quite distracts one’s ears.”
“Yes, you would. You would soon pick up enough to be understood in the shops and at market.”
At five o’clock, home came Monsieur Carimon. He welcomed the Miss Preens with honest, genuine pleasure, interspersed with a little French ceremony; making them about a dozen bows apiece before he met the hands held out to him.
They had quite a gala dinner. Soup to begin with—broth, the English ladies inwardly pronounced it—and then fish. A small cod, bought by Madame Carimon at the fish-market in the morning, with oyster sauce. Ten sous she had given for the cod, for she knew how to bargain now, and six sous for a dozen oysters, as large as a five-franc piece. This was followed by a delicious little fricandeau of veal, and that by a tarte à la crême from the pastrycook’s. She told her guests unreservedly what all the dishes cost, to show them how reasonably people might live at Sainteville.
Over the coffee, after dinner, the question of their settling in the place was fully gone into, for the benefit of Monsieur Carimon’s opinions, who gave them in good English.
“Depend upon it, Lavinia, you could not do better,” remarked Mary Carimon. “If you cannot make your income do here, you cannot anywhere.”
“We want to make it do well; not to betray our poverty, but to be able to maintain a fairly good appearance,” said Lavinia. “You understand me, I am sure, monsieur.”
“But certainly, mademoiselle,” he answered; “it is what we all like to do at Sainteville, I reckon.”
“And can do, if we are provident,” added madame. “French ways are not English ways. Our own income is small, Lavinia, yet we put by out of it.”
“A fact that goes without saying,” confirmed the pleasant little man. “If we did not put by, where would my wife be when I am no longer able to work?”
“Provisions being so cheap– What did you say, Nancy?” asked Madame Carimon, interrupting herself.
“I was going to say that I could live upon oysters, and should like to,” replied Nancy, shaking back her flaxen curls with a laugh. “Half-a-dozen of those great big oysters would make me a lovely dinner any day—and the cost would be only three halfpence.”
“And only fivepence the cost of that beautiful fish,” put in her sister. “In Sainteville our income would amply suffice.”
“It seems to me that it would, mesdemoiselles,” observed Monsieur Carimon. “Three thousand five hundred francs yearly! We French should think it a sufficient sum. Doubtless much would depend upon the way in which you laid it out.”
“What should we have to pay for lodgings, Mary?” inquired Lavinia. “Just a nice sitting-room and two small bedrooms; or a large room with two beds in it; and to be waited on?”
“Oh, you won’t find that at Sainteville,” was the unexpected answer. “Nobody lets lodgings English fashion: it’s not the custom over here. You can find a furnished apartment, but the people will not wait upon you. There is always a little kitchen let with the rooms, and you must have your own servant.”
It was the first check the ladies had received. They sat thinking. “Dear me!” exclaimed Nancy. “No lodgings!”
“Would the apartments you speak of be very dear?” asked Lavinia.
“That depends upon the number of rooms and the situation,” replied Madame Carimon. “I cannot call to mind just now any small apartment that is vacant. If you like, we will go to-morrow and look about.”
It was so arranged. And little Monsieur Carimon attended the ladies back to the Hôtel des Princes at the sober hour of nine, and bowed them into the porte cochère with two sweeps of his hat, wishing them the good-evening and the very good-night.
II
Thursday morning. Nancy Preen awoke with a sick headache, and could not get up. But in the afternoon, when she was better, they went to Mary Carimon’s, and all three set out to look for an apartment—not meeting with great success.
All they saw were too large, and priced accordingly. There was one, indeed, in the Rue Lamartine, which suited as to size, but the rooms were inconvenient and stuffy; and there was another small one on the Grande Place, dainty and desirable, but the rent was very high. Madame Carimon at once offered the landlord half-price, French custom: she dealt at his shop for her groceries. No, no, he answered; his apartment was the nicest in the town for its size, as mesdames saw, and it was in the best situation—and not a single sou would the worthy grocer abate.
They were growing tired, then; and five o’clock, the universal hour at Sainteville for dinner, was approaching.
“Come round to me after dinner, and we will talk it over,” said Mary Carimon, when they parted. “I will give you a cup of tea.”
They dined at the table d’hôte, which both of them thought