specialty of pared vegetables;
on her stall, covered with a strip of damp black lining, were little
lots of potatoes, turnips, carrots, and white onions, arranged in
pyramids of four--three at the base and one at the apex, all quite ready
to be popped into the pans of dilatory housewives. She also had bundles
duly stringed in readiness for the soup-pot--four leeks, three carrots,
a parsnip, two turnips, and a couple of springs of celery. Then there
were finely cut vegetables for julienne soup laid out on squares of
paper, cabbages cut into quarters, and little heaps of tomatoes and
slices of pumpkin which gleamed like red stars and golden crescents
amidst the pale hues of the other vegetables. Cadine evinced much more
dexterity than Marjolin, although she was younger. The peelings of the
potatoes she pared were so thin that you could see through them; she
tied up the bundles for the soup-pot so artistically that they looked
like bouquets; and she had a way of making the little heaps she set up,
though they contained but three carrots or turnips, look like very big
ones. The passers-by would stop and smile when she called out in her
shrill childish voice: "Madame! madame! come and try me! Each little
pile for two sous."

She had her regular customers, and her little piles and bundles were
widely known. Old Mother Chantemesse, seated between the two children,
would indulge in a silent laugh which made her bosom rise almost to
her chin, at seeing them working away so seriously. She paid them their
daily sous most faithfully. But they soon began to weary of the little
heaps and bundles; they were growing up, and began to dream of some more
lucrative business. Marjolin remained very childish for his years, and
this irritated Cadine. He had no more brains than a cabbage, she often
said. And it was, indeed, quite useless for her to devise any plan for
him to make money; he never earned any. He could not even do an errand
satisfactorily. The girl, on the other hand, was very shrewd. When but
eight years old she obtained employment from one of those women who sit
on a bench in the neighbourhood of the markets provided with a basket
of lemons, and employ a troop of children to go about selling them.
Carrying the lemons in her hands and offering them at two for three
sous, Cadine thrust them under every woman's nose, and ran after every
passer-by. Her hands empty, she hastened back for a fresh supply. She
was paid two sous for ev