The answer and the rest of the conversation was in French, but as this is an English book, I shall translate it into English.
“Is breakfast ready, Hortense?”
“Certainly; it has been ready half an hour.”
“Then I am ready, too; I have a canine hunger.”
He threw down his spade and entered the house: the narrow passage conducted him to a small parlour, where a breakfast of coffee and bread and butter, with the somewhat un-English accompaniment of stewed pears was spread on the table. Over these viands presided the lady who had spoken from the window. I must describe her before I go any further.
She seemed a little older than Mr. Moore, perhaps she was thirty-five, tall, and proportionately stout; she had very black hair, for the present twisted up in curl-papers; a high colour in her cheeks, a small nose, a pair of little black eyes. The lower part of her face was large in proportion to the upper; her forehead was small and rather corrugated; she had a fretful though not an ill-natured expression of countenance; there was something in her whole appearance one felt inclined to be half provoked with, and half amused at. The strangest point was her dress: a stuff petticoat and a striped cotton camisole. The petticoat was short, displaying well a pair of feet and ankles which left much to be desired in the article of symmetry.
You will think I have depicted a remarkable
