The young assistant's bashfulness
commended him to his mother-in-law's good graces. The matron became so
cheerful that she smiled as she looked at her husband, and allowed
herself some little pleasantries of time-honored acceptance in such
simple families. She wondered whether Joseph or Virginie were the
taller, to ask them to compare their height. This preliminary fooling
brought a cloud to the master's brow, and he even made such a point of
decorum that he desired Augustine to take the assistant's arm on their
way to Saint-Leu. Madame Guillaume, surprised at this manly delicacy,
honored her husband with a nod of approval. So the procession left the
house in such order as to suggest no suspicious meaning to the
neighbors.
"Does it not seem to you, Mademoiselle Augustine," said the assistant,
and he trembled, "that the wife of a merchant whose credit is as good
as Monsieur Guillaume's, for instance, might enjoy herself a little
more than Madame your mother does? Might wear diamonds--or keep a
carriage? For my part, if I were to marry, I should be glad to take
all the work, and see my wife happy. I would not put her into the
counting-house. In the drapery business, you see, a woman is not so
necessary now as formerly. Monsieur Guillaume was quite right to act
as he did--and besides, his wife liked it. But so long as a woman
knows how to turn her hand to the book-keeping, the correspondence,
the retail business, the orders, and her housekeeping, so as not to
sit idle, that is enough.
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