“You are,” she said, “as flaccid as Dutch tobacco, and it would take a couple of oxen to draw you out of your room. You fly work as you would the pest, and nothing pleases you but the window, you shameless girl. You are more amorous than Cupid himself, but, if I have any power, you shall live as close as a nun.”
On hearing all this, Panfila got up, yawned, stretched herself, and turning her back on her mother, went to the street door. Mother Holofernes, without paying attention to this, began to sweep with most tremendous energy, accompanying the noise of the broom with a monologue of this tenor:—
“In my time girls had to work like men.”
The broom gave the accompaniment of shis, shis, shis.
“And lived as secluded as nuns.”
And the broom went shis, shis, shis.
“Now they are a pack of fools.”—Shis, shis.
“Of idlers.”—Shis, shis.
“And think of nothing but husbands.—Shis, shis.