“The girl has no taste,” she continued.
“Well, if she hasn’t, you needn’t be afraid of her.”
“There will be no choice between you,” said the retired hairdresser, maliciously.
But there was a choice between them, and all the young girls of Viger chose Mademoiselle Viau. It was said she had such an eye; she would take a hat and pin a bow on here, and loop a ribbon there, and cast a flower on somewhere else, all the time surveying her work with her head on one side and her mouth bristling with pins. “There, how do you like that?—put it on—no, it is not becoming—wait!” and in a trice the desired change was made. She had no lack of work from the first; soon she had too much to do. At all hours of the day she could be seen sitting at her window, working, and “she must be making money fast,” argued Madame Laroque, “for she spends nothing.” In truth, she spent very little—she lived so plainly. Three times a week she took a fresh twist from the baker, once a day, the milkman left a pint of milk, and once every week mademoiselle herself stepped out to the butcher’s and bought a pound of steak. Occasionally she mailed a letter, which she always gave into the hands of the postmaster; if he was not there she asked for a pound of tea or something else that she needed. She was fast friends with Cuerrier, but with no one else, as she never received visitors. Once only did a young man call on her. It was young Jourdain, the clerk in the dry-goods store. He had knocked at the door and was admitted. “Ah!” said Madame Laroque, “it is the young men who can conquer.” But the next moment Monsieur Jourdain came out, and, strangely enough, was so bewildered as to forget to put on his hat. It was not this young man who could conquer.
“There is something mysterious about that young person,” said Madame Laroque between her teeth.
“Yes,” replied Cuerrier, “very mysterious—she minds her own business.”
“Bah!” said the widow, “who can tell what her business is, she who comes from no one knows where? But I’ll find out what all this secrecy means, trust me!”
So the widow watched the little house and its occupant very closely, and these are some of the things she saw: Every morning an open door and crumbs for the birds, the watering of the geranium, which was just going to flower, a small figure going in and out, dressed in gray, and, oftener than anything else, the same figure sitting at the window, working. This continued for a year with little variation, but still the widow watched. Every one else had accepted the presence of the new resident as a benefaction. They had got accustomed to her. They called her “the little milliner.” Old Cuerrier called her “the little one in gray.” But she was not yet adjusted in the widow’s system of things. She laid a plot with her second cousin, which was that the cousin should get a hat made by Mademoiselle Viau, and that she should ask her some questions.
“Mademoiselle Viau, were you born in the city?”
“I do not think, Mademoiselle, that green will become you.”