A Little Maid of Picardy by Amy Ella Blanchard

After this there was not a day passed that Lucie and Odette were not together, for while Odette belonged to the peasant class and Lucie to the bourgeois, this was no time for distinctions, and Paulette countenanced the acquaintance not only because Odette was a well-behaved young person, but because the two little girls were lonely and were companions in misery. Besides all this Odette was so alert and capable, knew so much of domestic affairs, that Paulette was convinced in time that she could trust the two girls to cook a meal, and to do many of the things which heretofore she had never admitted could be done by any one but herself. Like most in her walk of life, Paulette was suspicious, and must satisfy herself as to the character of those neighbors with whom Odette lived.

"They are old, those two next door," she reported to Lucie the day after Odette's first visit.