I can't do it; it throws me into a perspiration."
Then a stout woman, who was cutting some bread and butter for the three
children, intervened with an air of quiet authority: "You ought to take
those materials away, Mademoiselle Cecile. She's incapable of doing
anything with them. They will end by getting dirty, and then your people
won't take them back."
This stout woman was a certain Madame Joseph, a widow of forty and a
charwoman by calling, whom Benard, the husband, had at first engaged to
come two hours every morning to attend to the housework, his wife not
having strength enough to put on a child's shoes or to set a pot on the
fire. At first Euphrasie had offered furious resistance to this intrusion
of a stranger, but, her physical decline progressing, she had been
obliged to yield. And then things had gone from bad to worse, till Madame
Joseph became supreme in the household. Between times there had been
terrible scenes over it all; but the wretched Euphrasie, stammering and
shivering, had at last resigned herself to the position, like some little
old woman sunk into second childhood and already cut off from the world.
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