e would shrug her shoulders, and say,
"Bah! lose a game for a card!" and pursue the conversation.

He happened to mention mushrooms--fresh mushrooms. She threw down
her cards before the words were out of his mouth, and began to call,
"Jules! Jules!" Mr. Horace pulled the bell-cord, but madame was
too excitable for that means of communication. She ran into the
antechamber, and put her head over the banisters, calling, "Jules!
Jules!" louder and louder. She might have heard Jules's slippered feet
running from the street into the corridor and up-stairs, had she not
been so deaf. He appeared at the door.

"But where have you been? Here I have been raising the house a
half-hour, calling you. You have been in the street. I am sure you
have been in the street."

"Madame is very much mistaken," answered Jules, with resentful
dignity. He had taken off his white apron of waiter, and was
disreputable in all the shabbiness of his attire as cook. "When madame
forbids me to go into the street, I do not go into the street. I was
in the kitchen; I had fallen asleep. What does madame desire?" smiling
benevolently.

"What is this I hear? Fresh mushrooms in the market!"

"Eh, madame?"

"Fresh mushrooms in the market, and you have not brought me any!"

"Madame, there are fresh mushrooms everywhere in the market," waving
his hand to show their universality.

"Everybody is eating them--"

"Old Pomponnette," Jules continued, "only this morning offered me a
plate, piled up high, for ten cents."

"Idiot! Why did you not buy them?"

"If madame had said so; but madame did not say so. Madame said, 'Soup,
Jules; carrots, rice,'" counting on his fingers.

"And the gumbo?"

"I have explained that that was an accident. Madame said 'Soup,'"
enumerating his menu again; "madame never once said mushrooms."

"But how could I know there were mushrooms in the market? Do I go to
market?"

"That is it!" and Jules smiled at the question thus settled.

"If you had told me there were mushrooms in the market--" pursued
madame, persisting in treating Jules as a reasonable being.

"Why did not madame ask me? If madame had asked me, surely I would
have told madame. Yesterday Caesar brought them to the door--a whole
bucketful for twenty-five cents. I had to shut the door in his face to
get rid of him," triumphantly.

"And you brought me yesterday those detestable peas!"

"Ah," shrugging his shoulders, "madame told me to buy what I saw. I
saw