e yourself because I'd
found out that you'd spat on the window, you told me to stop my jawing,
for that's what you said to me, after all. Ah, vulgar fellow that you
are! The factory gentlemen are too kind to you. Your poor father was
their best workman. You are more genteel than your poor father, more
English; and you preferred to go into business rather than go on
learning Latin, and everybody thought you quite right; but for hard
work you're not much good--ah, la, la! Confess that you spat on the
window.

"For your poor mother," the ghost of Mame goes on, as she crosses the
room with a wooden spoon in her hand, "one must say that she had good
taste in dress. That's no harm, no; but certainly they must have the
wherewithal. She was always a child. I remember she was twenty-six
when they carried her away. Ah, how she loved hats! But she had
handsome ways, for all that, when she said, 'Come along with us,
Josephine!' So I brought you up, I did, and sacrificed everything...."

Overcome by the mention of the past, Mame's speech and action both
cease. She chokes and wags her head and wipes her face with her
sleeve.

I risk saying, gently, "Yes, I know it well."

A sigh is my answer. She lights the fire. The coal sends out a
cushion of smoke, which expands and rolls up the stove, falls back, and
piles its muslin on the floor. Mame manipulates the stove with her
feet in the cloudy deposit; and the hazy white hair which escapes from
her black cap is also like smoke.

Then she seeks her handkerchief and pats her pockets to get the velvet
coal-dust off her fingers. Now, with her back turned, she is moving
casseroles about. "Monsieur Crillon's father," she says, "old Dominic,
had come from County Cher to settle down here in '66 or '67. He's a
sensible man, seeing he's a town councilor. (We must tell him nicely
to take his buckets away from our door.) Monsieur Boneas is very rich,
and he speaks so well, in spite of his bad neck. You must show
yourself off to all these gentlemen. You're genteel, and you're
already getting a hundred and eighty francs a month, and it's vexing
that you haven't got some sign to show that you're on the commercial
side, and not a workman, when you're going in and out of the factory."

"That can be seen easily enough."

"I'd rather you had a badge."

Breathing damply and forcefully, she sniffs harder and quicker, and
looks here and there for her handkerchief; she prowls wit