“This muslin gown?”
“Not just now,” said Yvonne, “I was scraping lint.”
“Lint! For what?”
“Why, for some expedition they are preparing; for the next war.”
Will and Ethel were in admiration at such simplicity of life, in which young girls sewed at their own muslin gowns for the yearly ball, and varied their employment by picking lint for the next war.
“Just imagine!” Ethel said to herself. “I pitied her in Paris because she never went anywhere! Quite the contrary, she must have been having a thoroughly good time. Those days must have been regular escapades, an excess of liberty, compared to this life of work and obscure duties.”
She looked in turn at Yvonne, in her high spirits, at her mother, who was so self-effacing, and at the rigid, conservative, severe grandmother.
“Have you many amusements here?” Ethel asked. “A theater, books, fine walks?”
“Oh!” answered Yvonne, “we hardly go to the theater—once or twice a year, perhaps—and we receive few books, we have so little time to read. But amusements are not wanting, I assure you. Sometimes I go to market, and there’s the care of the house, with preserves to make; there are the garden and the fruits. We must have an eye to everything.”
“Yvonne is very whimsical, too,” said grand’mère; “she wanted some canary birds! Nowadays, young girls have nothing but pleasure in their heads!”