try. When bread was lacking at home it was difficult
for her to trick herself out. But she accomplished miracles, brought
ribbons back from the workshop and concocted toilettes--dirty dresses
set off with bows and puffs. The summer was the season of her greatest
triumphs. With a cambric dress which had cost her six francs she filled
the whole neighborhood of the Goutte-d'Or with her fair beauty. Yes, she
was known from the outer Boulevards to the Fortifications, and from the
Chaussee de Clignancourt to the Grand Rue of La Chapelle. Folks called
her "chickie," for she was really as tender and as fresh-looking as a
chicken.

There was one dress which suited her perfectly, a white one with pink
dots. It was very simple and without a frill. The skirt was rather short
and revealed her ankles. The sleeves were deeply slashed and loose,
showing her arms to the elbow. She pinned the neck back into a wide V as
soon as she reached a dark corner of the staircase to avoid getting her
ears boxed by her father for exposing the snowy whiteness of her throat
and the golden shadow between her breasts. She also tied a pink ribbon
round her blond hair.

Sundays she spent the entire day out with the crowds and loved it when
the men eyed her hungrily as they passed. She waited all week long for
these glances. She would get up early to dress herself and spend hours
before the fragment of mirror that was hung over the bureau. Her mother
would scold her because the entire building could see her through the
window in her chemise as she mended her dress.

Ah! she looked cute like that said father Coupeau, sneering and jeering
at her, a real Magdalene in despair! She might have turned "savage
woman" at a fair, and have shown herself for a penny. Hide your meat, he
used to say, and let me eat my bread! In fact, she was adorable, white
and dainty under her overhanging golden fleece, losing temper to the
point that her skin turned pink, not daring to answer her father, but
cutting her thread with her teeth with a hasty, furious jerk, which
shook her plump but youthful form.

Then immediately after breakfast she tripped down the stairs into the
courtyard. The entire tenement seemed to be resting sleepily in the
peacefulness of a Sunday afternoon. The workshops on the ground floor
were closed. Gaping windows revealed tables in some apartments that were
already set for dinner, awaiting families out working up an appetite by
strolling along the fort