Kate Chopin

“ She would gather up the train of her calico wrapper in one hand, and balancing the broom gracefully in the other, would go tripping down to where the lawyer leaned, as comfortably as he could, over her picket fence.
Of course she had talked to him of her troubles. Every one knew Madame Célestin’s troubles.
“Really, madame,” he told her once, in his deliberate, calculating, lawyer-tone, “it’s more than human nature – woman’s nature – should be called upon to endure. ”

“ Old Natchitoches would not hold them comfortably, perhaps; but the world was surely wide enough to live in, outside of Natchitoches town.
His heart beat in a strangely irregular manner as he neared Madame Célestin’s house one morning, and discovered her behind the rosebushes, as usual plying her broom. ”

“ Not a picayune, not one, not one, have I lay my eyes on in the pas’ fo’ months that I can say Célestin give it to me or sen’ it to me.”
“The scoundrel!” muttered lawyer Paxton in his beard.
“An’ pourtant,” she resumed, “they say he’s making money down roun’ Alexandria w’en he wants to work.”
“I dare say you have n’t seen him for months?” she suggested the lawyer.
“It’s good six month’ since I see a sight of Célestin,” she admitted.
“That’s it, that’s what I say; he has practically deserted you; fails to support you. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to learn that he has ill treated you.” ”