kneeling. She looked up in surprise at the approach of so large a number of people, then smiled in response to Eugenia’s greeting, although she did not rise immediately. She wore a smock of a coarse blue material, covering her from her throat to her ankles. Her head was bare and she seemed to have the very blackest hair one could imagine and her eyes were equally so. Her face, however, was tanned, and was a little worn and sad. But seated on her head and[81] shoulders and hovering everywhere about her, were a flock of pigeons, fluttering and talking apparently to themselves and to her. [81] Close behind the garden was the pigeon house, set high up and painted gray, with bright blue lines about the small windows. From the inside came the cooing and mourning, the sounds of the most delicate and romantic of love murmurings, as well as the noises necessary to the smoothing of small, new famines. But the sounds were unmistakable; there are no others like those of a dove cote. A little farther to one slide stood a small house, which could hardly contain more than two rooms. Coming out of the front door, attracted by the footsteps of so many visitors, was Madame Bonnèt. She was not young or graceful like her daughter, Berthe, yet the greater number of the girls found their eyes turning admiringly toward the older woman. Without immediately knowing why, they recognized her attraction. But this was because Madame Bonnèt typified so much[82] that is finest and strongest in the French national life. [82] She was large, with a deep bosom and broad shoulders, but with narrow hips. She had dark hair, black almost as Berthe’s and as free from gray; her skin was as smooth and clear one might say as satin, but there was a softness and a fragrance to Madame’s skin that no satin ever had. She wore a mourning dress, but with a wide white apron over it and a white collar about her full throat. Smiling a welcome to her unknown guests, Madame Bonnèt opened her arms to Eugenia Castaigne and Eugenia kissed her as no one had ever seen her do to anyone else. Their display of affection was perfectly simple and natural and of course over in a moment. However, Mildred and Barbara and Nona, Eugenia’s old friends, who had been with her at the time of her marriage, understood that there was some
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