Scolding softly to herself she preceded Billy into the pantry. There some cold chicken and a little Madeira were found. Billy began to eat ravenously. As she took the glass and sipped the Madeira with puckered lips, she blinked over the brim of the glass at the housekeeper, who stood before her, the large face, heated from sleeping, closely framed by the white night-cap, the corners of the mouth drawn down severely and disapprovingly.
"Well, Runtze, what do you say to all this?" asked Billy.
"I was very sorry for it," answered the housekeeper coldly and formally.
Runtze turned to the wooden frame on which the sausages hung, and began to stroke one of them gently with her hand. "Why, it's this way," she said, "a countess must be like an almond that I have soaked well in hot water and slip out of its skin, beautiful and white."
Billy had once more bent over her chicken-wing. "Oh, that is it," she said as she ate, "but Bonnechose says, _cette pauvre_ Runtze has had her own romance and her own unhappy love-affair."
The corners of the housekeeper's mouth were drawn down still lower and more tartly. "In our station all sorts of things can happen: we love for a while and then again we don't and are at peace. But with our mistresses it is different. If there is a hole in the cover of the old sofa down in my room, I don't care, and some time when I have time I mend it; but the company rooms upstairs must be spick and span, and that's what I look out for every morning."
"I believe he was a miller?" asked Billy in a businesslike tone.
Billy, her hunger now appeased, leaned back in her chair. "Oh, red-haired, that's very pretty sometimes, and his face powdered with flour and the red hair with it. But I am done now." She stood up. "I thank you, Runtze, your meal was very good."
"That is the main thing," said the woman, "you are in love, and then again you are not, but you always have to eat."