M. Linders, whose means did not always
admit of reckless expenditure, and whose credit was not wholly
unlimited, had gone there two or three times, when visiting
Spa to retrieve fallen fortunes; and the first time he had
taken Madelon with him, she and Madame Bertrand had become
such fast friends, that, for his child's sake, he never
afterwards went anywhere else. Madelon had the most lively,
pleasant recollections of the stout motherly landlady, whose
store of bonbons and confitures had been absolutely endless.
Of all her friends in this class, Madame Bertrand had been the
one to whom she had most attached herself, and now it was
almost with the feeling of finding herself at home that she
saw the hotel before her.
The door stood open, and she went into the small hall, or
rather passage, which ran through the house, ending in another
door, which, also open, afforded a green view of many currant
and gooseberry bushes in Madame Bertrand's garden. To the
right was the staircase, to the left the _salle-a-manger_, a low
room with two windows looking on to the Place, and furnished
with half-a-dozen small round tables, for the hotel was of too
unpretentious a nature to aspire to a _table d'hote_; the floor
lacked polish, and the furniture was shabby, yet the room had
a friendly look to our homeless Madelon, as a frequent
resting-place in such wanderings to and fro as had been hers
in former years.
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