“Hello! And I took it for an enormous, enormous dog!”
He pronounced the word enormous the second time with a jeering swell of the voice which might be tolerably well represented by capitals: “an enormous, ENORMOUS dog.”
The old woman straightened herself up in a fury.
“Nasty brat!” she grumbled. “If I hadn’t been bending over, I know well where I would have planted my foot on you.”
The boy was already far away.
“Kisss! kisss!” he cried. “After that, I don’t think I was mistaken!”
The old woman, choking with indignation, now rose completely upright, and the red gleam of the lantern fully lighted up her livid face, all hollowed into angles and wrinkles, with crow’s-feet meeting the corners of her mouth.
Her body was lost in the darkness, and only her head was visible. One would have pronounced her a mask of Decrepitude carved out by a light from the night.
The boy surveyed her.
“Madame,” said he, “does not possess that style of beauty which pleases me.”