pass that pair of slaps on to Delphin if he ever
ventured to rub against her skirts. It was vexing to be boxed on the
ears for a boy whom she had never looked in the face!

1 Naval term signifying a rickety old concern.

Margot, at sixteen years strong as a man and handsome as a lady, had
the reputation of being a scornful person, very hard on lovers. And from
that, added to the trifle of the two slaps, of the presumptuousness of
Delphin, and of the wrath of Margot, one ought easily to comprehend the
endless gossip of Coqueville.

Notwithstanding, certain persons said that Margot, at bottom, was not so
very furious at sight of Delphin circling around her. This Delphin was
a little blonde, with skin bronzed by the sea-glare, and with a mane of
curly hair that fell over his eyes and in his neck. And very powerful
despite his slight figure; quite capable of thrashing any one three
times his size. They said that at times he ran away and passed the night
in Grandport. That gave him the reputation of a werwolf with the girls,
who accused him, among themselves, of "making a life of it"--a vague
expression in which they included all sorts of unknown pleasures.
Margot, when she spoke of Delphin, betrayed too much feeling. He,
smiling with an artful air, looked at her with eyes half shut and
glittering, without troubling himself the least in the world over her
scorn or her transports of passion. He passed before her door, he
glided along by the bushes watching for her hours at a time, full of the
patience and the I cunning of a cat lying in wait for a tomtit; and when
suddenly she discovered him behind her skirts, so close to her at times
that she guessed it by the warmth of his breath, he did not fly, he took
on an air gentle and melancholy which left her abashed, stifled, not
regaining her wrath until he was some distance away. Surely, if her
father saw her he would smite her again. But she boasted in vain that
Delphin would some day get that pair of slaps she had promised him;
she never seized the moment to apply them when he was there; which made
people say that she ought not to talk so much, since in the end she kept
the slaps herself.

No one, however, supposed she could ever be Delphin's wife. In her case
they saw the weakness of a coquette. As for a marriage between the
most beggardly of the Mahes, a fellow who had not six shirts to set up
housekeeping with, and the daughter of the mayor, the richest heiress of
t