"Oh, you're nervous because nobody will lend you any thing," replied the assailed one. "You're a sweet one, Dolly, to set her a-going."
"Well, what did you fly at Dolly that way for?" said Melchior's Lenore: "she didn't mean any harm by it. Can't you take a little fun?"
"Has Florian really come home?" asked Crescence, softly.
"Of course he has," cried Corpse Kitty, aloud. "Just look out, you hemp-toad: you'll find you've 'most done carrying your head as high as a sleigh-horse: Florian will take the geometer's bearings before you know what's what."
Soges now appeared as another Moses to open the well for the daughters of Jethro: he did not seem to woo any of them, however, for he was not by any means in a bland or amiable frame of mind.
"Give Crescence the cream of the water: she's got to have the geometer's standees washed to-night," cried Kitty.
"Let her talk," said Lenore: "you can't worry her more than by not listening to her. She's just like the dogs: they bark at you, and if you walk on quietly they run home again and bark at the next person that comes along the road. She's after making everybody out as bad as she is herself, if she can. But you must be on the look-out about Florian now, or you'll get into trouble."
"Yes," said another girl: "he's brought lots of money with him, and the first thing he did was to give his father a gold ducat. The money must 'a' looked scared when it got into that room. The old fellow's so poor that the mice all ran away from him."
"Florian can dress and undress himself five times over and not take all the fine clothes out of his chest," said a third.
"And he speaks French 'most all the time."