"_Lit ... sommier ... traversin ..._" all the names of the complicated
parts of a bed, a sacred French bed. As Marise looked at them on the
page she could see Jeanne in the mornings, taking poor stupid little
Isabelle's head right off because she didn't make the bed up smoothly
enough; and all the time it was about a million times smoother than any
bed ever was in America! Marise didn't believe the President of the
United States had his bed-clothes pulled so tight and smooth. And she
wondered if Jeanne worked in the White House, if she would let even the
President's little girl sit down on the bed in the daytime. How
_particular_ they were about things in France! About everything. When
you bought anything in a store how they did drive you wild with their
slowness in getting it put up in the package just _so_, as if it
mattered, when you were going to take it out of the package three
minutes later, as soon as you got home. And at school how they did fuss
about neatness! The lessons were easy enough to learn. Marise never had
any trouble with lessons, but how could anybody ever do things as neatly
as they wanted you to. And how the teacher jumped on you if you didn't,
ever so much worse than if you got the answer to an arithmetic problem
wrong. Mercy! How she did scold! There wasn't anybody in America knew
_how_ to scold like that even if they wanted to, and they didn't. It had
scared Marise at first, and made her feel like crying, and she never had
got entirely used to it although she saw how all the other girls did,
just took it and didn't care and did whatever they liked behind her
back.
Marise couldn't get used to Jeanne that way either, to her yelling so
when she scolded. Marise hated to have people get mad and excited. And
how Jeanne did carry on about the house being neat, the part that is,
where company could come; (under her kitchen sink it smelled awfully and
was full of greasy rags) and yet she'd shine up the salon floor over and
over when it was already shiny, and never think of those rags. The least
little bit of clutter left around in the dining-room, or even your own
room, and how she would scold! And yet she was so awfully good to you,
and was always giving you big, smacking kisses, and hugging you, and she
always saved over the best things to eat when Maman had a lunch party,
and you were at school. Even when Maman had said you couldn't have any
of something Jeanne always brought it to your room, under her apron,
after you'd gone to bed. It wasn't very nice to do things behind Maman's
back, but everybody seemed to be doing things behind everybody else's
back. Maman did behind Father's, lots of times, and it was perfectly
understood between them that Marise was never to tell Father on her. And
it would be telling on Jeanne if you told Mother. And anyhow Marise
didn't see Maman so very much any more, to tell her things; it was
mostly Jeanne who did things for her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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