"How is that?"

"Yes, the doctor called me, and I passed him in his egg through the
half-open door. There he is again, at his mortar and his filter. We
won't see him now before noon."

Clotilde turned pale with disappointment. She drank her milk standing,
took her roll in her hand, and followed the servant into the kitchen.
There were on the ground floor, besides this kitchen and the
dining-room, only an uninhabited room in which the potatoes were stored,
and which had formerly been used as an office by the doctor, when he
received his patients in his house--the desk and the armchair had years
ago been taken up to his chamber--and another small room, which opened
into the kitchen; the old servant's room, scrupulously clean, and
furnished with a walnut chest of drawers and a bed like a nun's with
white hangings.

"Do you think he has begun to make his liquor again?" asked Clotilde.

"Well, it can be only that. You know that he thinks of neither eating
nor drinking when that takes possession of him!"

Then all the young girl's vexation was exhaled in a low plaint:

"Ah, my God! my God!"

And while Martine went to make up her room, she took an umbrella from
the hall stand and went disconsolately to eat her roll in the garden,
not knowing now how she should occupy her time until midday.