How he filled her thoughts, to be sure! What endless dialogues she had with him down in her own heart, just between the two of them. “Now then, Monsieur Friquet, what are we going to have for dinner? A couple of poached eggs? I’ve just bought them, new laid, at the green-grocer’s. Oh! you can almost see through them; just you look. And not too dear either, thank God! There, the fire just burning up nicely. Well, have you made up your mind? Will you have them poached or boiled? Oh! never mind me. To begin with, I don’t care which; I like one as well as the other. I’ve got some salad too—fine fresh salad. Ah! so you’re laughing, Monsieur Friquet! You’ll laugh better still directly. Boiled, then, it’s to be, eh? You see, you bad boy, we only think of pleasing you.” She was hardly home before the fire was crackling, the egg-boiler singing; in next to no time the eggs were on the table, and the two of them, Claire and the sparrow, were pecking away, she sitting in front of the cloth, he perched in front of her on the edge of a glass or else clinging to her fingers. At every mouthful he would give his wings a shake, looking saucily now at the food, now at Claire, with his head on one side. _Chirp! chirp! chirp!_ he would say in his shrill treble. It was at once an appeal to his mistress to give him more, and a way of thanking her for the trouble she took in feeding him. His impudent little beak would dive into every single thing—bread, salt, salad, the hollow of his mistress’s hand, poking everywhere, filching bits from her very lips, never still for an instant. Teasing, defying, thieving, he was in perpetual motion, as his brethren are among the leaves of the forest trees. They drank out of the same cup, ate off the same plate. Ah! but Monsieur Friquet had his wilful moods too at times; _he_ was not the fellow to be satisfied with everything; now it was the bread he refused with a little decided peck that said as plain as words: “I won’t have it!”—now it was the egg, or the salad, or something else. You see, he knew quite well, did Monsieur Friquet, there was a biscuit waiting for him in the cupboard, and he was inordinately fond of biscuit. Sunday was a special festival. Up betimes as usual, for workgirls are never lie-abeds, Claire would set to rights the disorder of the week, tripping on tip-toe about the room, not to wake Monsieur Friquet, who was snoring in a corner, a fat ball of feathers, with his head under his wing. “Monsieur Friquet won’t be awake for another hour,” she would think to herself. “I shall have time enough to set all straight”—and she would set to work, dusting, sweeping, washing the floor, happy in the prospect of the coming Sunday that would release her a while from her chain of servitude. At last the bird would wake up, and there would be quick cries of: “Good morning, Monsieur Friquet! How have you slept?” “Chirp! chirp!” would come the answer. And she would reply— “Oh! so have I—excellently, thank you.”