The chairs, some of them rush-bottomed, others of carved gilt, were ranged about the table; then Olwen and Agatha Walsh sped out into the yard and returned with the knives that Etienne, the boy in the green drugget apron, had at last polished to his satisfaction. In the middle of the red-tiled kitchen Madame Leroux still stormed as shrilly as though she alone of all excellent housewives possessed worthless servants. "Is it not enough that I myself must arise at half-past four today, and it is that I must do _all_ myself, me, as well as to entertain the friends and the relations of Monsieur, they who are eating their blood with jealousy because he marries himself with an English lady of the high nobility? And why are the boards not placed over the bowls of soup? My faith, it is then that _I_ must work, _I_ must arrange, _I_ must plan, _I_ must have the eyes everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, while you let the fire die down, female idle ones who do nothing but regard with open mouths and talk in corners and try to eat me the _glacés_ fruits out of the dishes?" (Gasp for breath.) "Take you these immediately, Marie Claire----" she waved towards a score of trussed chickens that looked like a frieze of poultry--"and set them in the pans. And pose you those lids so that the pottage may simmer as it must." She pointed to the vast arched fireplace with the grid running from one end to the other. "_Mon Dieu_, if this boy here had as many legs as an octopus he could not more expressly place them in my way. That he does at each moment! Is it that I have sent my own children out to receive _les amis_ even at Arcachon, to be encumbered by thee? The children? They will feast out here in the yard with the children of the notary and the little cousins; I do not wish that they are the whole time with the grown ones when one talks----" And she bustled out into the _cour_ to look to the long trestled table there which had been surrounded by a still further variety of chairs. It was here that Miss Walsh in her halting French asked where was Gustave, where was Monsieur Leroux? "The men?" Madame gabbled. "Ah, for that, where would they be? Invisibles, so long as there is work to be done," with a half-indulgent laugh. "You will see also, in good time, you English ladies, that which the _service militaire_ does for the men! They make their service. They return. They put themselves at their ease. Behold, they are required to do nothing further for the rest of their life. It is we, Mesdemoiselles, we who are accustomed to it; we other French wives. You also, you will see! Ah, hold, the oysters! Now, Etienne, you will dust me once again the seats of all these chairs, I say to you, and with a dry duster, I pray you, not a wet one; dry, dry, dry, dry, dry----" In this exalting hubbub did Olwen pass the whole morning with her friend until the sallow little Italian waiter came down to announce that _déjeuner_ was served.