Summer changes took place in the pension itself. The storey above, which was let unfurnished during the winter, was incorporated, as usual, into the general establishment. There was a week of cleaning, during which the house was given over to men in soft straw hats and blue blouses. And then a week of straightening, when new curtains were put up, and floors rewaxed, and dingy coverings removed from chairs and sofas, which burst out resplendent in bright green velvet. The latter proceedings were superintended by an agile young man in alpaca sleeves and green baize apron. It was the summer waiter, who had emerged from the mysterious limbo where summer waiters hibernate, and was resuming his duties, apparently at the point he had left them at the end of the previous season. Mme. Boccard and he conversed at vast distances, which was trying to those who did not see how the welfare of the pension was being thereby furthered. In her quiet moments, the good lady was busy sending out prospectuses and answering replies to advertisements and applications. She went about smiling perspiringly at the prospect of a successful season.
The first new guests to arrive were M. le Commandant Porniclion and his wife. He was a stout-hearted old Gascon, a veteran of Solferino and Gravelotte, who talked in a great voice and with alarming gestures of blood and battles, and obeyed his little brown wife like a lamb. His friend, Colonel Cazet, was coming with his wife later on. For some years they had been regular summer boarders of Mme. Boccard. The next arrival was a middle-aged man, called Skeogh, who had commercial business in Geneva. At the first he caused disappointment through adding up figures in a little black book at meal times. But Frau Schultz found him a most superior person, after listening to a confidential account of the jute market, in which commodity she seemed to have been vaguely interested at one period of her life. Whereupon she talked to him about Lottchen, and he put away the black book.
“_Quelle Sirène!_” cried Mme. Popea, in wicked exultation.
The next to come was Raine Chetwynd. The old man went to the railway-station in the morning to meet him, and bore him back in triumph.