s!) did not interfere at all, but overlooked
her business from a considerable distance, from that dark room where she
passed her life reading newspaper novels.

At nine o'clock the work-women arrived, five tall, pale-faced, faded
girls, wretchedly dressed, but with their hair becomingly arranged,
after the fashion of poor working-girls who go about bare-headed through
the streets of Paris.

Two or three were yawning and rubbing their eyes, saying that they were
dead with sleep.

At last they went to work beside a long table where each had her own
drawer and her own tools. An order had been received for mourning
jewels, and haste was essential. Sidonie, whom the forewoman instructed
in her task in a tone of infinite superiority, began dismally to sort a
multitude of black pearls, bits of glass, and wisps of crape.

The others, paying no attention to the little girl, chatted together as
they worked. They talked of a wedding that was to take place that very
day at St. Gervais.

"Suppose we go," said a stout, red-haired girl, whose name was Malvina.
"It's to be at noon. We shall have time to go and get back again if we
hurry."

And, at the lunch hour, the whole party rushed downstairs four steps at
a time.

Sidonie had brought her luncheon in a little basket, like a school-girl;
with a heavy heart she sat at a corner of the table and ate alone for
the first time in her life. Great God! what a sad and wretched thing
life seemed to be; what a terrible revenge she would take hereafter for
her sufferings there!

At one o'clock the girls trooped noisily back, highly excited.

"Did you see the white satin gown? And the veil of point d'Angleterre?
There's a lucky girl!"

Thereupon they repeated in the workroom the remarks they had made in
undertones in the church, leaning against the rail, throughout the
ceremony. That question of a wealthy marriage, of beautiful clothes,
lasted all day long; nor did it interfere with their work-far from it.

These small Parisian industries, which have to do with the most trivial
details of the toilet, keep the work-girls informed as to the fashions
and fill their minds with thoughts of luxury and elegance. To the poor
girls who worked on Mademoiselle Le Mire's fourth floor, the blackened
walls, the narrow street did not exist. They were always thinking of
something else and passed their lives asking one another:

"Malvina, if you were rich what would you do? For my part, I'd live o