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.