"
"What, not for embroidery?"
"No? and why not? _Mais oui!_"--saying which, and with a pleasant laugh,
the speaker entered the room. She was a girl of sixteen or thereabout,
very beautiful, with very black hair and eyes. A face and form more
entirely out of place you could not have found in the whole city. She
sat herself at his feet, and, with her interlocked hands upon his knee,
and her face, full of childish innocence mingled with womanly wisdom,
turned to his, appeared for a time to take principal part in a
conversation which, of course, could not be overheard in the corridor
outside.
Whatever was said, she presently rose, he opened his arms, and she sat
on his knee and kissed him. This done, there was a silence, both smiling
pensively and gazing out over the rotten balcony into the street. After
a while she started up, saying something about the change of weather,
and, slipping away, thrust a match between the bars of the grate. The
old man turned about to the fire, and she from her little room brought a
low sewing-chair and sat beside him, laying her head on his knee, and he
stroking her brow with his brown palm.
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