bout the
yard all I had collected, with so much trouble, to begin my baby linen
for my child. What good can it do them?"

Fleur-de-Marie did not say a word, but began very actively to pick up,
one by one, from under the women's feet, all the rags she could collect.
One prisoner ill-temperedly kept her foot on a sort of little bed-gown
of coarse woollen cloth. Fleur-de-Marie, still stooping, looked up at
the woman, and said to her in a sweet tone:

"I beg of you let me pick it up. I ask it in the name of this poor woman
who is weeping."

The prisoner removed her foot. The bed-gown was rescued, as well as most
of the other scraps, which La Goualeuse acquired piece by piece. There
remained to obtain a small child's cap, which two prisoners were
struggling for, and laughing at. Fleur-de-Marie said to them:

"Be all good, pray do. Let me have the little cap."

"Oh, to be sure! It's for a harlequin in swaddling-clothes this cap is!
It is made of a bit of gray stuff, with points of green and black
fustian, and lined with a bit of an old mattress cover."

The description was exact, and was hailed with loud and long-continued
shoutings.

"Laugh away, but let me have it," said Mont Saint-Jean; "and pray do not
drag it in the mud as you have some of the other things. I'm sorry
you've made your hands so dirty for me, Goualeuse," she added, in a
grateful tone.

"Let me have the harlequin's cap," said La Louve, who obtained
possession of it, and waved it in the air as a trophy.

"Give it to me, I entreat you," said Goualeuse.

"No! You want to give it back to Mont Saint-Jean."

"Certainly I do."

"Oh, it is not worth while, it is such a rag."

"Mont Saint-Jean has nothing but rags to dress her child in, and you
ought to have pity upon her, La Louve," said Fleur-de-Marie, in a
mournful voice, and stretching out her hand towards the cap.

"You sha'n't have it!" answered La Louve, in a brutal tone; "must
everybody always give way to you because you are the weakest? You come,
I see, to abuse the kindness that is shown to you."

"But," said La Goualeuse, with a smile full of sweetness, "where would
be the merit of giving up to me, if I were the stronger of the two?"

"No, no; you want to wheedle me over with your smooth, canting words;
but it won't do,--you sha'n't have it, I tell you."

"Come, come, now, La Louve, do not be ill-natured."

"Let me alone! You tire me to death!"

"Oh, pray do!"

"I will not!"

"Y