me Sergeot slipped
from her desk, and, after a furtive touch to her hair, went in next
door, to pour oil upon the troubled waters.

Madame Caille, throned at her counter, received her visitor with
unexampled frigidity.

"Ah, it is you," she said. "You have come to make some purchases, no
doubt."

"Eggs, madame," answered her visitor, disconcerted, but tactfully
accepting the hint.

"The best quality--or--?" demanded Alexandrine, with the suggestion of a
sneer.

"The best, evidently, madame. Six, if you please. Spring weather at
last, it would seem."

To this generality the other made no reply. Descending from her stool,
she blew sharply into a small paper bag, thereby distending it into a
miniature balloon, and began selecting the eggs from a basket, holding
each one to the light, and then dusting it with exaggerated care before
placing it in the bag. While she was thus employed Zut advanced from a
secluded corner, and, stretching her fore legs slowly to their utmost
length, greeted her acquaintance of the morning with a yawn. Finding in
the cat an outlet for her embarrassment, Esperance made another effort
to give the interview a friendly turn.

"He is beautiful, madame, your matou," she said.

"It is a female," replied Madame Caille, turning abruptly from the
basket, "and she does not care for strangers."

This second snub was not calculated to encourage neighbourly overtures,
but Madame Sergeot had felt herself to be in the wrong, and was not to
be so readily repulsed.

"We do not see Monsieur Caille at the Salon Malakoff," she continued.
"We should be enchanted"--

"My husband shaves himself," retorted Alexandrine, with renewed dignity.

"But his hair"--ventured Esperance.

"_I_ cut it!" thundered her foe.

Here Madame Sergeot made a false move. She laughed. Then, in confusion,
and striving, too late, to retrieve herself--"Pardon, madame," she
added, "but it seems droll to me, that. After all, ten sous is a sum so
small"--

"All the world, unfortunately," broke in Madame Caille, "has not the
wherewithal to buy mirrors, and pay itself frescoes and appareils
antiseptiques! The eggs are twenty-four sous--but we do not pride
ourselves upon our eggs. Perhaps you had better seek them elsewhere for
the future!"

For sole reply Madame Sergeot had recourse to her expressive shrug, and
then laying two francs upon the counter, and gathering up the sous which
Alexandrine rather hurled at than handed her,