During the numerous trips that she made from the house to the pump she saw that not only did grass and thistles grow in the Field, but there were flowers. Evidently some neighbors had thrown some plants over the fence and the seeds had sprung up here and there. Scattered about she saw a few roots of wall-flowers, pinks and even some violets!
What a lovely idea! She would pick some and put them in their room. They would drive away the bad odor, and at the same time make the place look gay.
It seemed that the flowers belonged to no one, for Palikare was allowed to eat them if he wished, yet she was afraid to pick the tiniest one without first asking Grain-of-Salt.
"Do you want to sell them?" he asked.
"No, just to put a few in our room," she replied.
"Oh, if that's it you may take as many as you like, but if you are going to sell them, I might do that myself. As it's for your room, help yourself, little one. You like the smell of flowers. I like the smell of wine. That's the only thing I can smell."
She picked the flowers, and searching amongst the heap of broken glass she found an old vase and some tumblers.
The miserable room was soon filled with the sweet perfume of wall-flowers, pinks and violets, which kept out the bad odors of the rest of the house, and at the same time the fresh, bright colors lent a beauty to the dark walls.
While working, she had made the acquaintance of her neighbors. On one side of their room lived an old woman whose gray head was adorned with a bonnet decorated with the tri-color ribbon of the French flag. On the other side lived a big man, almost bent double. He wore a leather apron, so long and so large that it seemed to be his only garment. The woman with the tri-color ribbons was a street singer, so the big man told her, and no less a person than the Baroness of whom Grain-of-Salt had spoken. Every day she left the Guillot Field with a great red umbrella and a big stick which she stuck in the ground at the crossroads or at the end of a bridge. She would shelter herself from the sun or the rain under her red umbrella and sing, and then sell to the passersby copies of the songs she sang.
As to the big man with the apron, he was a cobbler, so she learned from the Baroness, and he worked from morning to night. He was always silent, like a fish, and for this reason everybody called him Father Carp. But although he did little talking he made enough noise with his hammer.