e of the retail dealers would make
as much as two hundred francs in a few hours. On days like those only
Cadine's curly locks peered over the mounds of pansies, mignonette, and
marguerites. She was quite drowned and lost in the flood of flowers.
Then she would spend all her time in mounting bouquets on bits of rush.
In a few weeks she acquired considerable skillfulness in her business,
and manifested no little originality. Her bouquets did not always
please everybody, however. Sometimes they made one smile, sometimes they
alarmed the eyes. Red predominated in them, mottled with violent tints
of blue, yellow, and violet of a barbaric charm. On the mornings when
she pinched Marjolin, and teased him till she made him cry, she made up
fierce-looking bouquets, suggestive of her own bad temper, bouquets
with strong rough scents and glaring irritating colours. On other days,
however, when she was softened by some thrill of joy or sorrow, her
bouquets would assume a tone of silvery grey, very soft and subdued, and
delicately perfumed.

Then, too, she would set roses, as sanguineous as open hearts, in lakes
of snow-white pinks; arrange bunches of tawny iris that shot up in
tufts of flame from foliage that seemed scared by the brilliance of the
flowers; work elaborate designs, as complicated as those of Smyrna rugs,
adding flower to flower, as on a canvas; and prepare rippling fanlike
bouquets spreading out with all the delicacy of lace. Here was a cluster
of flowers of delicious purity, there a fat nosegay, whatever one might
dream of for the hand of a marchioness or a fish-wife; all the charming
quaint fancies, in short, which the brain of a sharp-witted child of
twelve, budding into womanhood, could devise.

There were only two flowers for which Cadine retained respect; white
lilac, which by the bundle of eight or ten sprays cost from fifteen to
twenty francs in the winter time; and camellias, which were still more
costly, and arrived in boxes of a dozen, lying on beds of moss, and
covered with cotton wool. She handled these as delicately as though they
were jewels, holding her breath for fear of dimming their lustre, and
fastening their short stems to springs of cane with the tenderest care.
She spoke of them with serious reverence. She told Marjolin one day
that a speckless white camellia was a very rare and exceptionally lovely
thing, and, as she was making him admire one, he exclaimed: "Yes;
it's pretty; but I prefer your