Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back
with a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey
stockings, and an apron with a bib like those worn by hospital
nurses.
Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five,
she looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell
her age; erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure
working automatically.
CHAPTER II
THE HEROINE
Like every other woman, she had had an affair of the heart. Her
father, who was a mason, was killed by falling from a scaffolding.
Then her mother died and her sisters went their different ways; a
farmer took her in, and while she was quite small, let her keep
cows in the fields. She was clad in miserable rags, beaten for the
slightest offence and finally dismissed for a theft of thirty sous
which she did not commit. She took service on another farm where
she tended the poultry; and as she was well thought of by her
master, her fellow-workers soon grew jealous.
One evening in August (she was then eighteen years old), they
persuaded her to accompany them to the fair at Colleville. She was
immediately dazzled by the noise, the lights in the trees, the
brightness of the dresses, the laces and gold crosses, and the
crowd of people all hopping at the same time.
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