Part 7 (1/2)
Bah! You were wrong and I was right.”
The old Tricots were forever wrangling but it was always in a semi-humorous manner, and their great devotion to each other was always apparent. Judy found it was better never to take sides with either one as the moment she did both of them were against her.
How homelike the little apartment was behind the shops! It consisted of two bed rooms, a living room which opened into the shop and a tiny tiled kitchen about the size of a kitchen on a dining car--so tiny that it seemed a miracle that all the food displayed so appetizingly in the windows and gla.s.s cases of the shop should have been prepared there.
”It is so good of you to have me and I want to come more than I can say, but you must let me board with you. I couldn't stay unless you do.”
”That is as you choose, Mam'selle,” said the old woman. ”We do not want to make money on you, but you can pay for your keep if you want to.”
”All right, Mother, but I must help some, help in the shop or mind the baby, clean up the apartment, anything! I can't cook a little bit, but I can do other things.”
”No woman can cook,” a.s.serted old Tricot. ”They lack the touch.”
”Ah! Braggart! If I lay thee out with this pastry board, I'll not lack the touch,” laughed the wife. She was making wonderful little tarts with crimped edges to be filled with a.s.sortments of confiture.
”Let me mind the shop, then. I know I can do that.”
”Well, that will not be bad,” agreed old Tricot. ”While Marie (the daughter-in-law) washes the linen and you make the tarts, Mam'selle can keep the shop, but no board must she pay. I'll be bound new customers will flock to us to buy of the pretty face.” Judy blushed with pleasure at the old peasant's compliment.
”And thou, laggard and sloth! What will thou do while the women slave?”
”I--Oh, I will go to the Tabac's to see what news there is, and later to see if Jean is to the front.”
”Well, we cannot hear from Jean to-day and Paris can still stand without thy political opinion,” but she laughed and shoved him from the shop, a very tender expression on her lined old face.
”These men! They think themselves of much importance,” she said as she resumed her pastry making.
Having tied a great linen ap.r.o.n around Judy's slender waist (much slenderer in the last month from her economical living), and having instructed her in the prices of the cooked food displayed in the show cases, Mere Tricot turned over the shop to her care. The rosy baby was lying in a wooden cradle in the back of the little shop and the grandmother was in plain view in the tiny kitchen to be seen beyond the living room.
”Well, I fancy I am almost domesticated,” thought Judy. ”What an interior this would make--baby in foreground and old Mother Tricot on through with her rolling pin. Light fine! I've a great mind to paint while I am keeping shop, sketch, anyhow.”
She whipped out her sketch book and sketched in her motive with sure and clever strokes, but art is long and shops must be kept. Customers began to pile in. The spinach was very popular and Judy became quite an adept in dis.h.i.+ng it out and weighing it. Potato salad was next in demand and cooked tongue and rosbif disappeared rapidly. Many soldiers lounged in, eating their sandwiches in the shop. Judy enjoyed her morning greatly but she could not remember ever in her life having worked harder.
When the tarts were finished and displayed temptingly in the window, swarms of children arrived. It seemed that Mere Tricot's tarts were famous in the Quarter. More soldiers came, too. Among them was a face strangely familiar to the amateur shop girl. Who could it be? It was the face of a typical Boulevardier: dissipated, ogling eyes; black moustache and beard waxed until they looked like sharp spikes; a face not homely but rather handsome, except for its expression of infinite conceit and impertinence.
”I have never seen him before, I fancy. It is just the type that is familiar to me,” she thought. ”_Mais quel type!_”
Judy was looking very pretty, with her cheeks flushed from the excitement of weighing out spinach and salad, making change where sous were thought of as though they were gold and following the patois of the peasants that came to buy and the argot of the gamin. She had donned a white cap of Marie's which was most becoming. Judy, always ready to act a part, with an instinctive dramatic spirit had entered into the role of shop keeper with a vim that bade fair to make the Tricots' the most popular place on Boulevarde Montparna.s.se. Her French had fortunately improved greatly since her arrival in Paris more than two years before and now she flattered herself that one could not tell she was not Parisienne.
The soldier with the ogling eyes and waxed moustache lingered in the shop when his companions had made their purchases and departed. He insisted upon knowing the price of every ware displayed. He asked her to name the various confitures in the tarts, which she did rather wearily as his persistence was most annoying. She went through the test, however, with as good a grace as possible. Shop girls must not be squeamish, she realized.
One particularly inviting gooseberry tart was left on the tray. Judy had had her eye on it from the first and trembled every time a purchaser came for tarts. She meant to ask Mere Tricot for it, if only no one bought it. And now this particularly objectionable customer with his rolling black eyes and waxed moustache was asking her what kind it was!
Why did he not buy what he wanted and leave?
”_Eh? Qu'est-ce que c'est?_” he demanded with an amused leer as he pointed a much manicured forefinger at that particularly desirable tart.
Judy was tired and the French for gooseberry left her as is the way with an acquired language. Instead of _groseille_ which was the word she wanted, she blurted out in plain English:
”Gooseberry jam!”
”Ah, I have bean pense so mooch. You may spick ze Eengleesh with me, Mees. Gueseberry jaam! Ha, ha! An' now, Mees, there iss wan question I should lak a demande of the so beootifool demoiselle: what iss the prize of wan leetle kees made in a so lufly tart?” He leaned over the counter, his eyes rolling in a fine frenzy.