Gavard seemed somewhat put out on hearing this.  Quenu had lowered his head, while Lisa, turning round, looked keenly at Florent, her neck swollen, her bosom straining her bodice almost to bursting point.  She was just going to open her mouth when La Sarriette entered the shop, and there was another pause in the conversation.

“Dear me!” exclaimed La Sarriette with her soft laugh, “I’d almost forgotten to get any bacon fat.  Please, Madame Quenu, cut me a dozen thin strips—­very thin ones, you know; I want them for larding larks.  Jules has taken it into his head to eat some larks.  Ah! how do you do, uncle?”

She filled the whole shop with her dancing skirts and smiled brightly at everyone.  Her face looked fresh and creamy, and on one side her hair was coming down, loosened by the wind which blew through the markets.  Gavard grasped her hands, while she with merry impudence resumed:  “I’ll bet that you were talking about me just as I came in.  Tell me what you were saying, uncle.”

However, Lisa now called to her, “Just look and tell me if this is thin enough.”

She was cutting the strips of bacon fat with great care on a piece of board in front of her.  Then as she wrapped them up she inquired, “Can I give you anything else?”

“Well, yes,” replied La Sarriette; “since I’m about it, I think I’ll have a pound of lard.  I’m awfully fond of fried potatoes; I can make a breakfast off a penn’orth of potatoes and a bunch of radishes.  Yes, I’ll have a pound of lard, please, Madame Quenu.”

Lisa placed a sheet of stout paper in the pan of the scales.  Then she took the lard out of a jar under the shelves with a boxwood spatula, gently adding small quantities to the fatty heap, which began to melt and run slightly.  When the plate of the scale fell, she took up the paper, folded it, and rapidly twisted the ends with her finger-tips.

“That makes twenty-four sous,” she said; “the bacon is six sous—­thirty sous altogether.  There’s nothing else you want, is there?”

“No,” said La Sarriette, “nothing.”  She paid her money, still laughing and showing her teeth, and staring the men in the face.  Her grey skirt was all awry, and her loosely fastened red neckerchief allowed a little of her white bosom to appear.  Before she went away she stepped up to Gavard again, and pretending to threaten him exclaimed:  “So you won’t tell me what you were talking about as I came in?  I could see you laughing from the street.  Oh, you sly fellow!  Ah!  I sha’n’t love you any longer!”

Then she left the shop and ran across the road.

“It was Mademoiselle Saget who sent her here,” remarked handsome Lisa drily.

Then silence fell again for some moments.  Gavard was dismayed at Florent’s reception of his proposal.  Lisa was the first to speak.  “It was wrong of you to refuse the post, Florent,” she said in the most friendly tones.  “You know how difficult it is to find any employment, and you are not in a position to be over-exacting.”