ngly: "I offer any pair they like to those who will try
them on."

But they would not, and sat up very straight and looked dignified.

But the two Pumps looked so distressed that he renewed his offer to them,
and Flora, especially, visibly hesitated, and he insisted: "Come, my
dear, a little courage! Just look at that lilac pair; it will suit your
dress admirably."

That decided her, and pulling up her dress she showed a thick leg fit for
a milkmaid, in a badly fitting, coarse stocking. The commercial traveller
stooped down and fastened the garter. When he had done this, he gave her
the lilac pair and asked: "Who next?"

"I! I!" they all shouted at once, and he began on Rosa, who uncovered a
shapeless, round thing without any ankle, a regular "sausage of a leg,"
as Raphaele used to say.

Lastly, Madame Tellier herself put out her leg, a handsome, muscular
Norman leg, and in his surprise and pleasure, the commercial traveller
gallantly took off his hat to salute that master calf, like a true French
cavalier.

The two peasants, who were speechless from surprise, glanced sideways out
of the corner of one eye, and they looked so exactly like fowls that the
man with the light whiskers, when he sat up, said: "Co--co--ri--co" under
their very noses, and that gave rise to another storm of amusement.

The old people got out at Motteville with their basket, their ducks and
their umbrella, and they heard the woman say to her husband as they went
away:

"They are no good and are off to that cursed place, Paris."

The funny commercial traveller himself got out at Rouen, after behaving
so coarsely that Madame Tellier was obliged sharply to put him in his
right place, and she added, as a moral: "This will teach us not to talk
to the first comer."

At Oissel they changed trains, and at a little station further on
Monsieur Joseph Rivet was waiting for them with a large cart with a
number of chairs in it, drawn by a white horse.

The carpenter politely kissed all the ladies and then helped them into
his conveyance.

Three of them sat on three chairs at the back, Raphaele, Madame Tellier
and her brother on the three chairs in front, while Rosa, who had no
seat, settled herself as comfortably as she could on tall Fernande's
knees, and then they set off.

But the horse's jerky trot shook the cart so terribly that the chairs
began to dance and threw the travellers about, to the right and to the
left, as if they were dancing