Mademoiselle Sylvie and her brother were dumb with pleasure and amazement.

“Excuse me,” said the conductor, “the coach is waiting.  Sign my book and pay me forty-seven francs, sixty centimes, and whatever you please for myself and the conductor from Nantes; we’ve taken care of the little girl as if she were our own; and paid for her beds and her food, also her fare to Provins, and other little things.”

“Forty-seven francs, twelve sous!” said Sylvie.

“You are not going to dispute it?” cried the man.

“Where’s the bill?” said Rogron.

“Bill! look at the book.”

“Stop talking, and pay him,” said Sylvie, “You see there’s nothing else to be done.”

Rogron went to get the money, and gave the man forty-seven francs, twelve sous.

“And nothing for my comrade and me?” said the conductor.

Sylvie took two francs from the depths of the old velvet bag which held her keys.

“Thank you, no,” said the man; “keep ’em yourself.  We would rather care for the little one for her own sake.”  He picked up his book and departed, saying to the servant-girl:  “What a pair! it seems there are crocodiles out of Egypt!”

“Such men are always brutal,” said Sylvie, who overhead the words.

“They took good care of the little girl, anyhow,” said Adele with her hands on her hips.

“We don’t have to live with him,” remarked Rogron.

“Where’s the little one to sleep?” asked Adele.

Such was the arrival of Pierrette Lorrain in the home of her cousins, who gazed at her with stolid eyes; she was tossed to them like a package, with no intermediate state between the wretched chamber at Saint-Jacques and the dining-room of her cousins, which seemed to her a palace.  She was shy and speechless.  To all other eyes than those of the Rogrons the little Breton girl would have seemed enchanting as she stood there in her petticoat of coarse blue flannel, with a pink cambric apron, thick shoes, blue stockings, and a white kerchief, her hands being covered by red worsted mittens edged with white, bought for her by the conductor.  Her dainty Breton cap (which had been washed in Paris, for the journey from Nantes had rumpled it) was like a halo round her happy little face.  This national cap, of the finest lawn, trimmed with stiffened lace pleated in flat folds, deserves description, it was so dainty and simple.  The light coming through the texture and the lace produced a partial shadow, the soft shadow of a light upon the skin, which gave her the virginal grace that all painters seek and Leopold Robert found for the Raffaelesque face of the woman who holds a child in his picture of “The Gleaners.”  Beneath this fluted frame of light sparkled a white and rosy and artless face, glowing with vigorous health.  The warmth of the room brought the blood to the cheeks, to the tips of the pretty ears, to the lips and the end of the delicate nose, making the natural white of the complexion whiter still.