The dancing still went on, and the end of a quadrille drowned the ball-room in red dust; the walls cracked, a cornet produced shrill whistling sounds like a locomotive in distress; and when the dancers stopped they were smoking like horses.
"Do you remember?" said the Levaque woman, bending towards Maheude's ear; "you talked of strangling Catherine if she did anything foolish!"
Chaval brought Catherine back to the family table, and both of them standing behind the father finished their glasses.
"Bah!" murmured Maheude, with an air of resignation, "one says things like that—. But what quiets me is that she will not have a child; I feel sure of that. You see if she is confined, and obliged to marry, what shall we do for a living then?"
Now the cornet was whistling a polka, and as the dea
