They talked continually of yesterday's charming evening.

Nana kept rolling cigarettes, which she smoked, swinging up and down on her backward-tilted chair.

And as Zoe had remained behind and was lounging idly against the sideboard, it came about that the company were favored with her history.

She said she was the daughter of a midwife at Bercy who had failed in business.

First of all she had taken service with a dentist and after that with an insurance agent, but neither place suited her, and she thereupon enumerated, not without a certain amount of pride, the names of the ladies with whom she had served as lady's maid.