Again, at intervals, amid the happiness that overflowed her heart, amid the ecstasy that exalted her being, another disturbing thought passed through her mind. She would ask herself how the father would welcome his child. Two or three times she had attempted to tell him of her condition but had not dared. At last, one day, seeing that his face wore the expression she had awaited so long as a preliminary to telling him everything, an expression in which there was a touch of affection, she confessed to him, blushing hotly and as if asking his forgiveness, what it was that made her so happy. "That's all imagination!" said Jupillon. And when she had assured him that it was not imagination and that she was positively five months advanced in pregnancy: "Just my luck!" the young man rejoined. "Thanks!" And he swore. "Would you mind telling me who's going to feed the sparrow?" "Oh! never you fear! it sha'n't suffer, I'll look out for that. And then it'll be so pretty! Don't be afraid, no one shall know anything about it. I'll fix myself up. See! the last part of the time I'll walk like this, with my head back--I won't wear any petticoats, and I'll pull myself in--you'll see! Nobody shall notice anything, I tell you. Just think of it! a little child of our own!" "Well, as long as it's so, it's so, eh?" said the young man. "Say," ventured Germinie, timidly, "suppose you should tell your mother?" "Ma? Oh! no, I rather think not. You must lie in first. After that we'll take the brat to the house. It will give her a start, and perhaps she'll consent without meaning to." XX Twelfth Night arrived. It was the day on which Mademoiselle de Varandeuil gave a grand dinner-party regularly every year. She invited all the children of her own family or her old friends' families, great and small. The small suite would hardly hold them all. They were obliged to put part of the furniture on the landing, and a table was set in each of the two rooms which formed mademoiselle's whole suite. For the children, that day was a great festival to which they looked forward for a week. They came running up the stairway behind the pastry-cook's men. At table they ate too much without being scolded. At night, they were unwilling to go to bed, they climbed on the chairs and made a racket that always gave Mademoiselle de Varandeuil a sick headache the next day; but she bore them no grudge therefor: she had had the full enjoyment of a genuine grandmother's fete, in listening to them, looking at them, tying around their necks the white napkins that made them look so rosy. And not for anything in the world would she have failed to give this dinner-party, which filled her old maid's apartments with the fair-haired little imps of Satan, and brought thither, in a single day, an atmosphere of activity and youth and laughter that lasted a whole year.