On the great stair she encountered M. Froumois, the Intendant's
valet, a favorite gossip of the dame's, who used to invite him into
her snug parlor, where she regaled him with tea and cake, or, if
late in the evening, with wine and nipperkins of Cognac, while he
poured into her ear stories of the gay life of Paris and the bonnes
fortunes of himself and master--for the valet in plush would have
disdained being less successful among the maids in the servants'
hall than his master in velvet in the boudoirs of their mistresses.
M. Froumois accepted the dame's invitation, and the two were
presently engaged in a melee of gossip over the sayings and doings
of fashionable society in Quebec.
The dame, holding between her thumb and finger a little china cup of
tea well laced, she called it, with Cognac, remarked,--"They fairly
run the Intendant down, Froumois: there is not a girl in the city
but laces her boots to distraction since it came out that the
Intendant admires a neat, trim ankle. I had a trim ankle myself
when I was the Charming Josephine, M.
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