He nodded to his mother and asked for the paper.
“ ‘Drink your coffee while it’s hot,’ I said to him.
“He paid no attention to me.
He opened the paper and turned to the latest news.
“ ‘There’s nothing,’ said his mother.
“I didn’t know what she meant.
He cast his eyes down the columns and then took a long drink of coffee.
He was unusually silent.
I took his coat and began to give it a brush.
“ ‘You made your trousers in an awful mess last night,’ I said.
‘You’ll have to wear your blue suit to-day.’
“Madame Berger had put them over the back of a chair.
She took them to him and showed him the stains.
He looked at them for a minute while she watched him in silence.
You would have thought he couldn’t take his eyes off them.
I couldn’t understand their silence.
It was strange.
I thought they were taking a trivial accident in an absurdly tragic way.
But of course the French have thrift in their bones.
“ ‘We’ve got some petrol in the house,’ I said.
‘We can get the stains out with that.
Or they can go to the cleaner’s.’
“They didn’t answer.
Robert, frowning, looked down.
His mother turned the trousers round, I suppose to look if there were stains on the back, and then, I think, felt that there was something in the pockets.
“ ‘What have you got here?’
“He sprang to his feet.
“ ‘Leave it alone.
I won’t have you look in my pockets.’
“He tried to snatch the trousers from her, but before he could do so she had slipped her hand into the hip-pocket and taken out a bundle of bank-notes.
He stopped dead when he saw she had them.
She let the trousers drop to the ground and with a groan put her hand to her breast as though she’d been stabbed.
I saw then that they were both of them as pale as death.
A sudden thought seized me; Robert had often said to me that he was sure his mother had a little hoard hidden away somewhere in the house.
We’d been terribly short of money lately.
Robert was crazy to go down to the Riviera; I’d never been there and he’d been saying for weeks that if we could only get a bit of cash we’d go down and have a honeymoon at last.
You see, at the time we married, he was working at that broker’s and couldn’t get away.
The thought flashed through my mind that he’d found his mother’s hoard.
I blushed to the roots of my hair at the idea that he’d stolen it and yet I wasn’t surprised.
I hadn’t lived with him for six months without knowing that he’d think it rather a lark.
I saw that they were thousand-franc notes that she held in her hand.
Afterwards I knew there were seven of them.
She looked at him as though her eyes would start out of her head.
“ ‘When did you get them, Robert?’ she asked.
“He gave a laugh, but I saw he was nervous.
“ ‘I made a lucky bet yesterday,’ he answered.
“ ‘Oh, Robert,’ I cried, ‘you promised your mother you’d never play the horses again.’
“ ‘This was a certainty,’ he said,
‘I couldn’t resist.
We shall be able to go down to the Riviera, my sweet.