640 Les Miserables
saw beams with nails in them. You can judge of the bad dust
that makes in grinding. And then people complain of the
flour. They are in the wrong. The flour is no fault of ours.’
In a space between two windows a mower, who was seat-
ed at table with a landed proprietor who was fixing on a
price for some meadow work to be performed in the spring,
was saying:—
‘It does no harm to have the grass wet. It cuts better. Dew
is a good thing, sir. It makes no difference with that grass.
Your grass is young and very hard to cut still. It’s terribly
tender. It yields before the iron.’ Etc.
Cosette was in her usual place, seated on the cross-bar of
the kitchen table near the chimney. She was in rags; her bare
feet were thrust into wooden shoes, and by the firelight she
was engaged in knitting woollen stockings destined for the
young Thenardiers. A very young kitten was playing about
among the chairs. Laughter and chatter were audible in the
adjoining room, from two fresh children’s voices: it was
Eponine and Azelma.
In the chimney-corner a cat-o’-nine-tails was hanging
on a nail.
At intervals the cry of a very young child, which was
somewhere in the house, rang through the noise of the
dram-shop. It was a little boy who had been born to the The-
nardiers during one of the preceding winters,—‘she did not
know why,’ she said, ‘the result of the cold,’—and who was
a little more than three years old. The mother had nursed
him, but she did not love him. When the persistent clamor
of the brat became too annoying, ‘Your son is squalling,’