The lamp is flaring, and as Mame does not know where to stand it among the litter, she puts it on the floor and crouches to regulate the wick.  There rises from the medley of the old lady, vividly variegated with vermilion and night, a jet of black smoke, which returns in parachute form.  Mame sighs, but she cannot check her continual talk.

“You, my lad, you who are so genteel when you like, and earn a hundred and eighty francs a month,—­you’re genteel, but you’re short of good manners, it’s that chiefly I find fault with you about.  So you spat on the window-pane; I’m certain of it.  May I drop dead if you didn’t.  And you’re nearly twenty-four!  And to revenge yourself because I’d found out that you’d spat on the window, you told me to stop my jawing, for that’s what you said to me, after all.  Ah, vulgar fellow that you are!  The factory gentlemen are too kind to you.  Your poor father was their best workman.  You are more genteel than your poor father, more English; and you preferred to go into business rather than go on learning Latin, and everybody thought you quite right; but for hard work you’re not much good—­ah, la, la!  Confess that you spat on the window.

“For your poor mother,” the ghost of Mame goes on, as she crosses the room with a wooden spoon in her hand, “one must say that she had good taste in dress.  That’s no harm, no; but certainly they must have the wherewithal.  She was always a child.  I remember she was twenty-six when they carried her away.  Ah, how she loved hats!  But she had handsome ways, for all that, when she said, ’Come along with us, Josephine!’ So I brought you up, I did, and sacrificed everything....”

Overcome by the mention of the past, Mame’s speech and action both cease.  She chokes and wags her head and wipes her face with her sleeve.

I risk saying, gently, “Yes, I know it well.”

A sigh is my answer.  She lights the fire.  The coal sends out a cushion of smoke, which expands and rolls up the stove, falls back, and piles its muslin on the floor.  Mame manipulates the stove with her feet in the cloudy deposit; and the hazy white hair which escapes from her black cap is also like smoke.

Then she seeks her handkerchief and pats her pockets to get the velvet coal-dust off her fingers.  Now, with her back turned, she is moving casseroles about.  “Monsieur Crillon’s father,” she says, “old Dominic, had come from County Cher to settle down here in ’66 or ’67.  He’s a sensible man, seeing he’s a town councilor. (We must tell him nicely to take his buckets away from our door.) Monsieur Boneas is very rich, and he speaks so well, in spite of his bad neck.  You must show yourself off to all these gentlemen.  You’re genteel, and you’re already getting a hundred and eighty francs a month, and it’s vexing that you haven’t got some sign to show that you’re on the commercial side, and not a workman, when you’re going in and out of the factory.”