"Why, I am covering my melons!"
Old Fauchelevent really held in his hand at the moment when Jean Valjean accosted him a piece of matting, which he was engaged in spreading over the melon-frame. He had laid a good many pieces during the hour he had been in the garden, and it was this operation that produced the peculiar movements which Jean Valjean had noticed from the shed. He continued,—
"I said to myself, there is a bright moon and it is going to freeze, so I had better put these great-coats on my melons." And he added, as he looked at Jean Valjean with a grin, "You should have done the same. But how have you got here?"
Jean Valjean, feeling himself known by this man, at least under the name of Madeleine, only advanced cautiously. He multiplied his questions, and curiously enough they changed parts,—he, the intruder, became the questioner.
"And what is that bell you have on your knee?"
"That?" Fauchelevent said; "it is that they may avoid me."
"What on earth do you mean?"
Old Fauchelevent gave an inimitable wink.
"Oh, Lord, they are only women in this house, and lots of girls. It seems that I should be dangerous to meet, and so the bell warns them; when I come they go."
"What is this house?"