'Give it to me. I will put in the sleeves for you.'
As she took up the doll, two big lads of seventeen and eighteen came down the steps. They ran to Marthe and kissed her.
'Don't scold us, mother!' cried Octave gaily. 'I took Serge to listen to the band. There was such a crowd on the Cours Sauvaire!'
'I thought you had been kept in at college,' his mother said, 'or I should have felt very uneasy.'
Désirée, now altogether indifferent to her doll, had thrown her arms round Serge's neck, saying to him:
'One of my birds has flown away! The blue one, the one you gave me!'
She was on the point of crying. Her mother, who had imagined this trouble to be forgotten, vainly tried to divert her thoughts by showing her the doll. The girl still clung to her brother's arm and dragged him away with her, while repeating:
'Come and let us look for it.'
Serge followed her with kindly complaisance and tried to console her. She led him to a little conservatory, in front of which there was a cage placed on a stand; and here she told him how the bird had escaped just as she was opening the door to prevent it from fighting with a companion.
'Well, there's nothing very surprising in that!' cried Octave, who had seated himself on the balustrade of the terrace. 'She is always interfering with them, trying to find out how they are made and what it is they have in their throats that makes them sing. The other day she was carrying them about in her pockets the whole afternoon to keep them warm.'