Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools

hat. She wears high-heeled slippers now, and sometimes on Sundays dainty silk stockings, and her hair is braided down her back, little French Marguérite that she is, and her hat is never ragged any more, nor her hair tangled. Her eyes, though, are still the same velvety, half-drooping eyes, always opening and shutting and never still.

As she springs into the boat and pulls towards me I note how round and trim she is, and before we have landed at Madame Laguerre's feet I have counted up Lucette's birthdays,--those that I know myself,--and find to my surprise that she must be eighteen. We have always been the best of friends, Lucette and I, ever since she looked over my shoulder years ago and watched me dot in the outlines of her boat, with her dog Mustif sitting demurely in the bow.

Madame, her mother, begins again:--

"Do you know that it is Saturday that you come again to bother? Now it will be a filet, of course, with mushrooms and tomato salad; and there are no mushrooms, and