Of course, his girls were in a fine fright. If their father had been seized with _cholera morbus_ they could scarcely have gone about with longer faces, and the fact that he could not eat anything seemed to fill them with greater alarm than anything else. In vain I assured them that fasting was the best thing possible under the circumstances; in vain did Madame Marmoret, who was in her very worst temper, thank the Blessed Virgin, in a voice that might have been heard at the other end of St. Pucelle, that her master at last knew what it was to have an empty stomach (though why that circumstance should render her so grateful I did not at that moment understand). Poor Tessie and Ange continued to look scared and pale, and could not be persuaded to leave their father’s bedside even to eat their own meals. It was a very lonely day for me, for I did not consider the duties of a ward included making a third attendant in the sick-room; and I could not help feeling just a little wickedly pleased, with spiteful Madame Marmoret, that my guardian’s greedy selfishness should not go entirely unpunished. ‘Mamselle Ange is calling you,’ said Madame, in her curtest voice, as she thrust her head into the room where I was sitting, and ruminating on these things. ‘Won’t you do as well?’ I answered, as curtly as herself, for the woman’s persistent rudeness was beginning to make me angry. ‘You can go and ask her,’ she said, as she slammed the door in my face, and I felt if this kind of thing went on much longer, I should be hung for putting arsenic in Madame’s matutinal cup of coffee. I walked out of the front door and through the garden-gate in the side wall to the corridor, rather than pass through her domains whilst she remained in so vile a mood. ‘What is it you want of me, Ange?’ I asked. ‘Only to give a message to Monsieur le Baron, if he should call,’ she whispered. ‘Papa’s kind regards, and he is too ill to see him to-night. Do you mind, Hilda dear? I would ask Madame, but she is in such a dreadful temper. Tessie and I have had to do everything for ourselves.’ ‘I don’t mind at all. It is no trouble. But are you not coming down to tea?’ ‘I think we might, one at a time, as papa is asleep.’ I persuaded her to return with me, and, protected by each other’s presence, we made a raid upon the larder, and procured all that was necessary for the meal ourselves, whilst Madame called us by every name she could possibly think of. We were ‘pigs,’ ‘thieves,’ ‘beggars,’ ‘paupers,’ ‘vile English,’ everything, in fact, that was bad; but we laughed in her face, and carried off our bread and butter and coffee to the _salle_ in triumph.