Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/82

54 such a pass that rather than saddle himself with the responsibility which he had to assume with his cousin's cast-off clothes, Laurent would have preferred to wear the comfortable and durable clothes of his friends the laborers.

Nothing remained but to dispose of a certain pair of green and blue plaid trousers, an abomination that Cousin Wilham himself, who was not very exacting in regard to his wearing apparel, had ceased using after its third wearing.

Felicité coveted these disastrous breeches with a view to reselling them to the haberdasher. Each piece of clothing falling to the orphan decreased by so much the profit which she usually made on her employers' wardrobe. This circumstance was no stranger to the animosity that she cherished for Laurent. He, moreover, would willingly have given her his cousin's entire outfit, and especially the frightful spinach and indigo trousers, but he did not dare show his repugnance openly, since Cousin Lydia had taken it into her head that they would please him mightily.

At this moment Regina, who was looking for her mother, appeared on the stair-landing.

"Oh! The nightmare!" she cried, "I hope, Mamma, that you're not going to give that to Laurent? All the Peasant needs is that horror to make him deserve his name!"

And in an outburst of fraternal emotion, Gina, having examined the pile of old clothes destined for her cousin, declared that some of it might do for lounging clothes, but that there was no single suit which he could wear in public.

"Let's go. Mamma," she said, "I have two things to tend to down town, and, in passing, we'll stop at the