The Joy of Life

When the cuckoo-clock in the dining-room struck six, Chanteau lost all hope. He rose with a painful effort from the arm-chair in which he was sitting, warming his heavy, gouty legs before a coke fire. Ever since two o’clock he had been awaiting the arrival of Madame Chanteau, who, after five weeks’ absence, was to-day expected to bring from Paris their little cousin, Pauline Quenu, an orphan girl, ten years of age, whose guardianship they had undertaken.

‘I can’t understand it at all, Véronique,’ he said, opening the kitchen-door. ‘Some accident must have happened to them.’

The cook, a tall stout woman of five-and-thirty, with hands like a man’s and a face like a gendarme’s, was just removing from the fire a leg of mutton, which seemed in imminent danger of being over-done. She did not express her irritation in words, but the pallor of her usually ruddy cheeks betokened her displeasure.

‘Madame has, no doubt, stayed in Paris,’ she said curtly, ‘looking after that endless business which is putting us all topsy-turvy.’