She had taken possession of one of the garden-beds, which she dug, planted with vegetables, and carefully watered. The hard work delighted her. Then she desired to have some fowls, which devoured her vegetables and which she scolded with motherly tenderness. With these occupations of hers, gardening and fowl-keeping, she made herself dreadfully dirty.
'She's perfectly filthy!' cried Rose. 'I won't have her coming into my kitchen any more; she dirties everything! It is no use your trying to keep her neatly dressed, madame. If I were you I should just let her mess about as she likes.'
Marthe, now ever preoccupied, no longer took care even that Désirée should change her under-linen regularly. The girl sometimes wore the same chemise for three weeks together; her stockings fell over her shoes, which were sadly worn down at the heels, and her tattered skirts hung about her like a beggar's rags. Mouret was one day obliged to take up a needle himself, for the girl's dress was torn behind from top to bottom. She, however, laughed gleefully at her nakedness, at her hair that fell over her shoulders, and at her black hands and dirty face.
Marthe came to feel a sort of disgust of her. When she returned home from mass, still retaining in her hair the vague perfume of the church, she quite shuddered at the strong scent of earth which exhaled from her daughter. She sent her into the garden again immediately lunch was over. She could not bear to have her near her, distressed, disquieted as she was by the girl's robust vigour and clear laugh, which seemed to find amusement in everything.
'Oh, dear! how wearisome the child is!' she murmured sometimes, with an air of nerveless lassitude.
As Mouret heard her complain, he exclaimed in an impulse of anger:
'If she's in your way, we will turn her out of the house, as we have done the other two.'
'Indeed, I should be very glad if she were to go away,' Marthe answered unhesitatingly.
One afternoon, about the end of the summer, Mouret was alarmed at no longer being able to hear Désirée, who, a few minutes previously, had been making a tremendous noise at the bottom of the garden. He ran to see what had happened to her, and found her lying on the ground. She had fallen from a ladder on to which she had climbed to gather some figs: fortunately the box-plants had broken the force of her fall. Mouret, in a great fright, lifted her up in his arms and called for assistance. He thought she was dead; but she quickly came to herself, declared that she was none the worse for the accident, and wanted to climb the ladder again.
Marthe, however, had meantime come into the garden. When she heard Désirée laugh she seemed quite annoyed.