"Are we responsible for what is in the sacks?
We find in them a quantity of small seed which we cannot sift out, and which we are obliged to send through the mill-stones; there are tares, fennel, vetches, hempseed, fox-tail, and a host of other weeds, not to mention pebbles, which abound in certain wheat, especially in Breton wheat.
I am not fond of grinding Breton wheat, any more than long-sawyers like to saw beams with nails in them.
You can judge of the bad dust that makes in grinding.
And then people complain of the flour.
They are in the wrong.
The flour is no fault of ours."
In a space between two windows a mower, who was seated at table with a landed proprietor who was fixing on a price for some meadow work to be performed in the spring, was saying:--
"It does no harm to have the grass wet.
It cuts better. Dew is a good thing, sir.
It makes no difference with that grass. Your grass is young and very hard to cut still.
It's terribly tender. It yields before the iron."
Etc.
Cosette was in her usual place, seated on the cross-bar of the kitchen table near the chimney.
She was in rags; her bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes, and by the firelight she was engaged in knitting woollen stockings destined for the young Thenardiers.
A very young kitten was playing about among the chairs.
Laughter and chatter were audible in the adjoining room, from two fresh children's voices: it was Eponine and Azelma.
In the chimney-corner a cat-o'-nine-tails was hanging on a nail.
At intervals the cry of a very young child, which was somewhere in the house, rang through the noise of the dram-shop. It was a little boy who had been born to the Thenardiers during one of the preceding winters,--"she did not know why," she said, "the result of the cold,"--and who was a little more than three years old.
The mother had nursed him, but she did not love him. When the persistent clamor of the brat became too annoying, "Your son is squalling," Thenardier would say; "do go and see what he wants."