"Did Madame Shane know you were coming?" asked Madame Gigon.
"No, I had no time. . . . I left America in haste." She held back the truth. She did not say that she had come, deliberately and without warning, because she could take no chances on being refused. Sitting there, with only a few francs in the world, she felt secure. She was in Paris now in a house that was big and beautiful. The rest could be managed.
"She did not tell me. . . . She would have been here," continued Madame Gigon. Then, as if her brain were fatigued by the strain of speaking English, the old woman addressed a torrent of French to the little boy. When she had finished he advanced to Ellen, shyly, and held out his hand.
"She says," he repeated in the same piping voice, "that I must welcome you as master of the house. She says you are my cousin." He smiled gravely. "I never had a cousin before. And," he continued, "she says that if Maman had known she would have been here."
He stood regarding her with a look of fascination as though so strange and exotic a thing as a cousin was too thrilling to be passed over lightly. Touched by the simplicity of the child, Ellen drew him near to her and, addressing both him and Madame Gigon, said, "You are good to believe that I am Madame Shane's cousin. How could you know?"
Madame Gigon smiled shrewdly. She was withered and had a little black mustache. Again the boy translated her speech. "She says," he repeated, "that you have . . . une voix honnête." He hesitated. . . . "An honest voice . . . and that she knows the voice because she taught my mother in school and before her my grandmère. She says it is like my grandmère's voice."
As he spoke the old woman smiled again and wagged her head with extraordinary vigor. "Je connais la voix. . . . Je la connais bien."
