"So, including them, you would now have ten? Well, that's a nice state of
things! How can you do otherwise than starve?"

Moineaud began to laugh like the gay thriftless Paris workman that he
was. The little ones? Well, they grew up without his even noticing it,
and, indeed, he was really fond of them, so long as they remained at
home. And, besides, they worked as they grew older, and brought a little
money in. However, he preferred to answer his employer with a jest which
set them all laughing.

After he had explained the difficulty with the reaper, the others
followed him to examine the work for themselves. They were already
turning into a passage, when Beauchene, seeing the door of the women's
workshop open, determined to pass that way, so that he might give his
customary look around. It was a long, spacious place, where the
polishers, in smocks of black serge, sat in double rows polishing and
grinding their pieces at little work-boards. Nearly all of them were
young, a few were pretty, but most had low and common faces. An animal
odor and a stench of rancid oil pervaded the place.

The regulations required perfect silence there during work. Yet all the
girls were gossiping. As soon, however, as the master's approach was
signalled the chatter abruptly ceased. There was but one girl who, having
her head turned, and thus seeing nothing of Beauchene, went on furiously
abusing a companion, with whom she had previously started a dispute. She
and the other were sisters, and, as it happened, daughters of old
Moineaud. Euphrasie, the younger one, she who was shouting, was a skinny
creature of seventeen, light-haired, with a long, lean, pointed face,
uncomely and malignant; whereas the elder, Norine, barely nineteen, was a
pretty girl, a blonde like her sister, but having a milky skin, and