XIII
I MAKE NEW FRIENDS
MY three aunts and my grandmother’s stepmother, whom I afterwards called great-grandmother, appeared before me, standing together on the steps, as soon as the front door was opened. For a moment I stood aghast, for my grandmother’s three sisters, unlike her, who always wore such handsome gowns, were dressed as peasants, just like their maid Marguerite, in cotton jackets, cotton skirts gathered full around the hips, cotton kerchiefs, large grey linen-aprons with pockets, and they wore caps on their heads!
The youngest of them, aunt Anastasie, cried out, “Good-evening, niece! and welcome here!” in a clear, gay voice, and with the pretty accent of Soissons, the native place of her mother, who had returned thither with her husband, and from whom she had inherited it, doubtless. Marguerite took me off the donkey. My two other aunts and my “great-grandmother” had such high-bred manners that I concluded they must have disguised themselves to amuse me.
I went indoors, while Roussot was led off to the stable, braying loudly, I accompanying his song, which sent my aunts into fits of laughter.
The ice was broken; I had my supper, I chattered, and then fell asleep. It was about eleven o’clock at night.
At noon the next day I was still sleeping, and aunt Anastasie became frightened, and awakened me. They had been waiting an hour for breakfast.
Marguerite appeared, a parcel of clothes in her arms, and said to me:
“Now, Mam’zelle Juliette, you must dress as a peasant. We will put all your fine clothes away in a cupboard, and then you can enjoy yourself without fear of spoiling anything.”
So I tried on jackets and skirts belonging to aunt Anastasie, who was the most coquettish of the three! And such coquettishness! Coarse print gowns, faded, and washed out; and the old-fashioned patterns of them all, and the way they were cut! I was at last equipped in a horrible fashion. The skirt, being too long, was pulled over the waist-band, and bulged out all around my waist; the apron, rolled up in the same way, came nearly up to my chin. I pulled the sleeves up above my elbows. My cap I pushed back as they wear them in Bordeaux, so that it just rested on my long, braided hair.
It was too funny! I nearly fell over from a chair on which I had climbed to look at myself in a mirror. I screamed with laughter, for it is impossible to describe how absurdly I looked thus transformed. Grandmother would have cried out in holy horror—she who was scandalised if my dress was a little soiled, or my hair “à la quatre-six-deux,” as she would say.