“Yes, that’s so, madame. I find that she is very pleasant to look at.”
“Thank you, mon ami. Are you coming out with me to the shops?”
“Of course.”
“Then put on your hat.”
It was a showery day, but that did not trouble them, for whenever the rain began to fall Manon found a shop in which she wished to enquire the prices. She was in no hurry, and they had explored all the streets in the neighbourhood of the Hôtel de Ville before Manon made her choice. She bought her furniture at a shop in the Rue des Chaudronnières, cupboards, chairs, wash-hand stands fitted with drawers, a big French bed.
They had hesitated over that bed, and the shopkeeper and his wife joined in a debate that became a sort of family discussion. Manon could buy an iron bedstead of the English pattern, with a mattress and pillows for four hundred and ninety-five francs, but the French wooden bed looked handsome and more homely. It would cost them six hundred francs.
“What do you think?”
She looked at Paul.
“I like the wooden one.”
“It is a beautiful bed, madame, and the box-mattress is our very best.”