"Perhaps this young gentleman would like to take something?" said Madame Baudu, smiling at Pépé.
"No, thanks," replied Denise, "we each had a cup of milk at a café opposite the station." And as Geneviève looked at the small parcel she had laid on the floor near her, she added: "I left our box there too."
She blushed as she spoke feeling that she ought not to have dropped down on her friends in this way. Even in the train, just as she was leaving Valognes, she had been assailed by regrets and fears; and this was why she had left the box at the station and given the children their breakfast immediately on arriving in Paris.
"Well, well," suddenly said Baudu, "let's come to an understanding. 'Tis true that I wrote to you, but that was a year ago, and since then business hasn't been flourishing, I can assure you, my girl."
He stopped short, choked by an emotion he did not wish to show. Madame Baudu and Geneviève, had cast down their eyes with an air of resignation.
"Oh," continued he, "it's a crisis which will pass, no doubt, I'm not uneasy; but I have reduced my staff; there are only three here now, and this is not the moment to engage a fourth. In short, my poor girl, I cannot take you as I promised."
Denise listened, aghast and very pale. He repeated his words, adding: "It would do no good to either of us."
"All right, uncle," at last she replied, with a painful effort, "I'll try to manage all the same."
The Baudus were not bad sort of people. But they complained of never having had any luck. In the flourishing days of their business, they had had to bring up five sons, of whom three had died before attaining the age of twenty; the fourth had gone wrong, and the fifth had just started for Mexico, as a captain. Geneviève was the only one now left at home. From first to last, however, this large family had cost a deal of money, and Baudu had made things worse by buying a great lumbering country house, at Rambouillet, near his wife's father's place. Thus, a sharp, sour feeling was springing up in the honest old tradesman's breast.
"You might have warned us," he resumed, gradually getting angry at his own harshness. "You might have written and I should have told you to stay at Valognes. When I heard of your father's death I said what is right on such occasions, but you drop down on us without a word of warning. It's very awkward."