"Madame will catch cold," cried Zoe, who had stayed quietly behind under
the awning over the garden door.
But Madame wanted to see things, and at each new discovery there was a
burst of wonderment.
"Zoe, here's spinach! Do come. Oh, look at the artichokes! They are
funny. So they grow in the ground, do they? Now, what can that be? I
don't know it. Do come, Zoe, perhaps you know."
The lady's maid never budged an inch. Madame must really be raving mad.
For now the rain was coming down in torrents, and the little white silk
sunshade was already dark with it. Nor did it shelter Madame, whose
skirts were wringing wet. But that didn't put her out in the smallest
degree, and in the pouring rain she visited the kitchen garden and the
orchard, stopping in front of every fruit tree and bending over every
bed of vegetables. Then she ran and looked down the well and lifted up a
frame to see what was underneath it and was lost in the contemplation of
a huge pumpkin. She wanted to go along every single garden walk and to
take immediate possession of all the things she had been wont to dream
of in the old days, when she was a slipshod work-girl on the Paris
pavements. The rain redoubled, but she never heeded it and was only
miserable at the thought that the daylight was fading.
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