The sitting-room was exactly like the bedroom, except that its stencilling was bright green and that it had no bed. There was in each room a big bunch of dahlias of gorgeous hues—offerings from Madame Chalumeau.
Yellow Dog Papillon, who had been left with Brigit to keep her company, lay on one of the rugs and snapped rudely at flies. It was very warm, and the tea had proved quite undrinkable. Brigit thought that she did not greatly care for the Chevreuil d'Or.
Then eight o'clock struck and she rose and rang for hot water. The "maid," who was incidentally a grandmother, wore a blue skirt and a red blouse and smiled cheerfully and toothlessly.
"Yes, yes, mademoiselle, de l'eau chaude. I have brought it! Je connais ma clientèle, moi." With a proud smile she set down a jug about as large as a milk-jug for two coffee-drinkers, and withdrew.
Smiling to herself, Brigit dressed and then went into her sitting-room, and opening a window looked down into the street.
It is a most important thoroughfare, this Rue d'Argentin; the Rue de la Paix de Falaise.
Leaning out the window and looking to her left Brigit beheld the Place St. Gervais, with its fountain, its market-place, now of course empty, and its church steps, on which beggars sleep by day. Opposite her was a café, at present enlivened by the dashing presence of two foot-soldiers and an old man playing dominoes with himself.
Above the houses the sky was pale and clear, and from a garden off to the right at the end of the street came a cooing of wood-pigeons.
Two little boys in black blouses came running up the street, their sabots clacking against the rough cobbles. Someone was playing a mandolin, and at the foot of the street, near the bridge, a girl in a pink apron was flirting with a youth with curly red hair.
People stood by their shop doors, the men smoking small clay pipes, the women usually with a child or two at their skirts. A quiet scene, dull and homely, this birthplace of the Conqueror, and at this humble end of the great street rather pathetic in its aspect of simple relaxation.