'Avec plaisir,' said Henry. He had studied French regularly for six years at school.
'Rue de Bruxelles, No. 3,' she instructed him. 'Noon.'
'I know it!' he exclaimed delightedly. He had, in fact, passed through the street during the day.
No one had ever told him before that his ears were pretty.
When, after parleying nervously with the concierge, he arrived at the second-floor of No. 3, Rue de Bruxelles, he heard violent high sounds of altercation through the door at which he was about to ring, and then the door opened, and a young woman, flushed and weeping, was sped out on to the landing, Cosette herself being the exterminator.
'Ah, mon ami!' said Cosette, seeing him. 'Enter then.'
She charmed him inwards and shut the door, breathing quickly.
'It is my domestique, my servant, who steals me,' she explained. 'Come and sit down in the salon. I will tell you.'
The salon was a little room about eight feet by ten, silkily furnished. Besides being the salon, it was clearly also the salle à manger, and when one person had sat down therein it was full. Cosette took Henry's hat and coat and umbrella and pressed him into a chair by the shoulders, and then gave him the full history of her unparalleled difficulties with the exterminated servant. She looked quite a different Cosette now from the Cosette of the previous evening. Her black hair was loose; her face pale, and her lips also a little pale; and she was draped from neck to feet in a crimson peignoir, very fluffy.