He was small, and hollow-chested, but his head was magnificent with its generous of waving black hair; its sunken eyes that glowed darkly and and sometimes flamed, and its moustaches which were formidable.
272“Eh bien, Mamzelle Fleurette, à demain, à demain!” and he waved a nervous good-bye as he let himself quickly and noiselessly out.
However violent Lacodie might be in his manner toward conservatives, he was always gentle, and low-voiced with Mamzelle Fleurette, who was much older than he, much taller; who held no opinions, and whom he pitied, and even in a manner . Mamzelle Fleurette at once dismissed the bell-hanger, with whom, on general principles, she had no sympathy.
She wanted to close the store, for she was going over to the cathedral to . She stayed a moment in the watching Lacodie walk down the opposite side of the street. His step was something between a spring and a jerk, which to her partial eyes seemed the perfection of motion. She watched him until he entered his own small low doorway, over which hung a huge wooden key painted red, the of his trade.
For many months now, Lacodie had been coming daily to Mamzelle Fleurette’s little notion store to buy the morning paper, which he only bought and read, however, in the 273afternoon. Once he had crossed over with his box of keys and tools to open a cupboard, which would unlock for no inducements of its owner. He would not suffer her to pay him for the few moments’ work; it was nothing, he assured her; it was a pleasure; he would not dream of accepting payment for so a service from a camarade and fellow-worker. But she need not fear that he would lose by it, he told her with a laugh; he would only charge an extra quarter to the rich lawyer around the corner, or to the top-lofty druggist down the street when these might happen to need his services, as they sometimes did. This was an alternative which seemed far from right and honest to Mamzelle Fleurette. But she held a vague understanding that men were wickeder in many ways than women; that ungodliness was constitutional with them, like their sex, and inseparable from it.
Having watched Lacodie until he disappeared within his shop, she to her room, back of the store, and began her preparations to go out. She brushed carefully the black alpaca skirt, which hung in long 274folds around her spare figure. She smoothed down the brown, ill-fitting basque, and readjusted the old-fashioned,
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