At Gradelle’s establishment Lisa went on leading the calm, methodical life which her exquisite smiles illumined.  She had not accepted the pork butcher’s offer at random.  She reckoned upon finding a guardian in him; with the keen scent of those who are born lucky she perhaps foresaw that the gloomy shop in the Rue Pirouette would bring her the comfortable future she dreamed of—­a life of healthy enjoyment, and work without fatigue, each hour of which would bring its own reward.  She attended to her counter with the quiet earnestness with which she had waited upon the postmaster’s widow; and the cleanliness of her aprons soon became proverbial in the neighbourhood.  Uncle Gradelle was so charmed with this pretty girl that sometimes, as he was stringing his sausages, he would say to Quenu:  “Upon my word, if I weren’t turned sixty, I think I should be foolish enough to marry her.  A wife like she’d make is worth her weight in gold to a shopkeeper, my lad.”

Quenu himself was growing still fonder of her, though he laughed merrily one day when a neighbour accused him of being in love with Lisa.  He was not worried with love-sickness.  The two were very good friends, however.  In the evening they went up to their bedrooms together.  Lisa slept in a little chamber adjoining the dark hole which the young man occupied.  She had made this room of hers quite bright by hanging it with muslin curtains.  The pair would stand together for a moment on the landing, holding their candles in their hands, and chatting as they unlocked their doors.  Then, as they closed them, they said in friendly tones: 

“Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa.”

“Good night, Monsieur Quenu.”

As Quenu undressed himself he listened to Lisa making her own preparations.  The partition between the two rooms was very thin.  “There, she is drawing her curtains now,” he would say to himself; “what can she be doing, I wonder, in front of her chest of drawers?  Ah! she’s sitting down now and taking off her shoes.  Now she’s blown her candle out.  Well, good night.  I must get to sleep”; and at times, when he heard her bed creak as she got into it, he would say to himself with a smile, “Dash it all!  Mademoiselle Lisa is no feather.”  This idea seemed to amuse him, and presently he would fall asleep thinking about the hams and salt pork that he had to prepare the next morning.

This state of affairs went on for a year without causing Lisa a single blush or Quenu a moment’s embarrassment.  When the girl came into the kitchen in the morning at the busiest moment of the day’s work, they grasped hands over the dishes of sausage-meat.  Sometimes she helped him, holding the skins with her plump fingers while he filled them with meat and fat.  Sometimes, too, with the tips of their tongues they just tasted the raw sausage-meat, to see if it was properly seasoned.  She was able to give Quenu some useful hints, for she knew of many favourite southern