These excellent
but timid creatures employed a woman-of-all-work for the morning hours
only. Madame Descoings, who liked to cook, prepared the dinner. In the
evenings a few old friends, persons employed at the ministry who owed
their places to Bridau, came for a game of cards with the two widows.
Madame Descoings still cherished her trey, which she declared was
obstinate about turning up. She expected, by one grand stroke, to
repay the enforced loan she had made upon her niece. She was fonder of
the little Bridaus than she was of her grandson Bixiou,--partly from a
sense of the wrong she had done them, partly because she felt the
kindness of her niece, who, under her worst deprivations, never
uttered a word of reproach. So Philippe and Joseph were cossetted, and
the old gambler in the Imperial Lottery of France (like others who
have a vice or a weakness to atone for) cooked them nice little
dinners with plenty of sweets. Later on, Philippe and Joseph could
extract from her pocket, with the utmost facility, small sums of
money, which the younger used for pencils, paper, charcoal and prints,
the elder to buy tennis-shoes, marbles, twine, and pocket-knives.
Madame Descoings's passion forced her to be content with fifty francs
a month for her domestic expenses, so as to gamble with the rest.
On the other hand, Madame Bridau, motherly love, kept her expenses
down to the same sum. By way of penance for her former over-confidence,
she heroically cut off her own little enjoyments.
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