‘Ay, you are a beauty!’ growled the old man. ‘You smell of weeds enough to poison one—would any one think she was sixteen, that doll?’
Albine remained unabashed, however, and laughed still more heartily. Doctor Pascal, who was her great friend, let her kiss him.
‘So you are not frightened in the Paradou?’ he asked.
‘Frightened? What of?’ she said, her eyes wide open with astonishment. ‘The walls are too high, no one can get in. There’s only myself. It is my garden, all my very own. A fine big one, too. I haven’t found out where it ends yet.’
‘And the animals?’ interrupted the doctor.
‘The animals? Oh! they don’t hurt; they all know me well.’
‘But it is very dark under the trees?’
‘Course! there’s shade: if there were none, the sun would burn my face up. It is very pleasant in the shade among the leaves.’
She flitted about, filling the little garden with the rustling sweep of her skirts, and scattering round the pungent odour of wild flowers which clung to her. She had smiled at Abbé Mouret without trace of shyness, without heed of the astonished look with which he observed her. The priest had stepped aside. That fair-haired maid, with long oval face, glowing with life, seemed to him to be the weird mysterious offspring of the forest of which he had caught a glimpse in a sheet of sunlight.
‘I say, I have got some blackbird nestlings; would you like them?’ Albine asked the doctor.