REGRET by KATE CHOPIN

SUMMARY

Mamzelle Aurlie lived on her farm with her workers, her cook Aunt Ruby and her dog Ponto. She was a
strong, healthy woman who dressed almost like a man and managed her farti all by herself. She was fifty
and had never thought of getting married, although she had received a proposal at the age of twenty.
She did not regret living the single life.

Although she was quite alone in the world, she kept herself busy with the farm work and the poultry and
her religion.

One morning, quite like a bolt from the blue her nearest neighbour, Odile, landed at her house with the
distressing news that she had been summoned to a neighbouring parish to minister to her sick mother.
Her husband was away in far off Taxas and on no account could she think of taking her four little children
with her. She just expected that Mamzelle Aurlie would look after them during her absence.

The children were Marcline and Marclette, Ti Nomme and the infant Lodie. Odile left them on Manzelle
Aurlie’s porch and left in Valsin’s cart.

At first Mamzelle Aurlie was too dismayed to know what to do. She watched the four children, in
different emotional states and wondered what the right and dutiful thing to do would be. She fed them.

During the first few days she was out of her depths in dealing with the children. Gradually she learnt
things about them like, Marclette wept at being spoken to in an assertive way and TiNomme loved
flowers so much that he plucked all her gardenias and pinks. She dressed them in pillow slips and
washed their tender feet before putting them to sleep, but little did they understand her method of
shooing them away to bed.

She confessed to her cook that she would rather look after a dozen plantations than those four children.
She tended to their clothes, which were in disrepair with her sewing basket, which she normally seldom
used. Gradually she started getting accustomed to their laughing, crying and chattering and even the soft
breath of plump Lodie’s body as the baby slept beside her.

But at the end of two weeks Odile returned with beaming face and alert body to reclaim her children.
The crisis in her life was over and the children had o be returned. They were collected from the various
occupations they were preoccupied with and sent home.

The empty house felt still. The cart had disappeared into the twilight and no sound could be heard
except the shrill, happy voices of the children. Mamzelle Aurlie turned into her house, which needed to
be tended to as it had been left in a mess by the children. But Mamzelle Aurlie sat at her table and
putting her head on her arm began to cry out aloud, like one in terrible pain. There was only her dog
beside her, licking her hand.