The Argosy — page 81: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

66 All Souls’ Eve. she ordered a handsome tombstone to be placed in the cemetery to his memory. Mademoiselle Anastasie consoled herself by accepting the addresses of a neighbouring farmer: who, having become possessed of the notion that she would now be the inheritor, had hastened to offer them. But the grief of Clara Fitzgerald! None saw its outward signs, save in her now invariably languid manner and pallid cheek. Babette set that down to her mother’s illness. For Mrs. Fitzgerald had been seized with rheumatic fever ; and lay a martyr to suffering and fractious- ness. And the weeks flew on again. ITT. Boom! boom! boom! ‘The heavy bell of St. Eloi’s ‘church, never heard but on state occasions, or when a fire happened in the commune, suddenly tolled out at evening twilight. Boom! boom! boom! Clara started in nervousness from the chair she occupied in Babette’s kitchen. Anxiety on her. mother’s account, combined with her own secret sorrow, was beginning to tell on hernerves and health. ‘Babette ! hark there! It must be a fire.” ‘Sit yourself down again, Miss Clare, and look to your saucepan,” responded Babette. “ You are forgetting the féte of to-morrow: All Saints’ Day. The bell’s thundering out for that.” Clara resumed her place on the wooden chair by the stove, and went on stirring the arrowroot in the saucepan. Mrs. Fitzgerald, more peevish than ever, now she was recovering, fancied none of these messes, unless they were prepared by her daughter. So Clara made frequent visits to Babette’s kitchen, to the complete satisfaction of that valuable domestic, who invariably treated her to a dish of gossip. “My faith! isn’t la patronne going to be smart to-morrow!” she began, in a half whisper, jerking her head in the direction of Madame Coe’s salle-A-manger, where that lady was snugly ensconced, her feet and her petticoats over an open charcoal chauffrette. “She has been having her purple velvet bonnet done up with green ribbons and grapes, and she has got a new cloth mantle; one of them round grey things just come up. What are you going to wear new to-morrow, | Miss Clare?” ‘‘T ?” answered Clara, languidly. ‘ Nothing.” “ Nothing!” retorted Babette. ‘‘ But you are going to church?” “Of course,” answered the young lady. | “ And as if folks went there in old clothes to-morrow! I wouldn’t show my face at church on All Saints’ Day in a cap I had worn before, if I knew I should get a sweetheart by it. You have not been here on the First of November, Miss Clare?” ‘‘ No, we have been in England both years. Mamma receives her rents then. I have never been in France on the day of All Saints.” Comicbooks. cor