on which she was ironing, he greedily watched all these women’s clothes spread about him, the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.
“What is that for?” asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the crinoline or the hooks and eyes.
“Why, haven’t you ever seen anything?” Félicité answered laughing. “As if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn’t wear the same.”
“Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!” And he added with a meditative air, “As if she were a lady like madame!”
But Félicité grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. She was six years older than he, and Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin’s servant, was beginning to pay court to her.
“Let me alone,” she said, moving her pot of starch. “You’d better be off and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. Before you meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you’ve got a beard to your chin.”