THE CONQUEST OF PLASSANS
I
Désirée clapped her hands. She was fourteen years old and big and strong for her age, but she laughed like a little girl of five.
'Mother! mother!' she cried, 'look at my doll!'
She showed her mother a strip of rag out of which she had been trying for the last quarter of an hour to manufacture a doll by rolling it and tying it at one end with a piece of string. Marthe raised her eyes from the stockings that she was darning with as much delicacy of work as though she were embroidering, and smiled at Désirée.
'Oh! but that's only a baby,' she said; 'you must make a grown-up doll and it must have a dress, you know, like a lady.'
She gave the child some clippings of print stuff which she found in her work-table, and then again devoted all her attention to her stockings. They were both sitting at one end of the narrow terrace, the girl on a stool at her mother's feet. The setting sun of a still warm September evening cast its calm peaceful rays around them; and the garden below, which was already growing grey and shadowy, was wrapped in perfect silence. Outside, not a sound could be heard in that quiet corner of the town.
They both worked on for ten long minutes without speaking. Désirée was taking immense pains to make a dress for her doll. Every few moments Marthe raised her head and glanced at the child with an expression in which sadness was mingled with affection. Seeing that the girl's task seemed too much for her, she at last said: