The cellar was warm, and the wire bed surprisingly comfortable, and Manon lay curled up, looking at the yellow light and feeling in no hurry to leave the bed.
“Another fine day,” she said; “I wonder if the man is still asleep.”
She became aware of a thudding sound coming from the back of the house, a sound that associated itself with ideas of work—strenuous work on a frosty morning. Manon felt guilty. She had a vision of Paul warming himself after a night spent with one blanket under a tin roof, and she jumped up and lit the stove. She had decided to give him hot coffee.
When the stove was well alight, she brought a comb and a little mirror out of her bag and put up her hair. She had slept in her clothes, and however much she disliked the feeling of it, she realized that such things as blankets bulk big in any scheme of civilization, and that without blankets a woman’s sense of daintiness might not be able to survive.
“I must go to Amiens,” she reflected, as she washed her hands and face in an old tin basin half full of cold water; “but what a pity that things are so dear.”
The stove needed more wood, and she went up in search of her partner, discovering him in the yard, breaking up boxes with a pick.
“You poor man,” she said, “are you frozen?”
“I had to thaw my feet and hands,” he laughed, “but life is devilish good.”
“We will change all that—not the devilish good part of it, Monsieur Paul. There will be hot coffee in ten minutes.”
“I am going to splice that ladder before breakfast.”