Page 124 - madame-bovary

dered with privet hedges. They were in bloom, and so were
the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the sweetbriar that
sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in the hedg-
es one could see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap,
or tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of
trees. The two, side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon
him, and he restraining his pace, which he regulated by
hers; in front of them a swarm of midges fluttered, buzzing
in the warm air.
The recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which
shaded it.
Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it,
beneath the dormer-window of the garret, a string of on-
ions. Faggots upright against a thorn fence surrounded a
bed of lettuce, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet peas
stung on sticks. Dirty water was running here and there on
the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags, knit-
ted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse
linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the
nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm.
With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny lit-
tle fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen
hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their business,
left in the country.
‘Go in,’ she said; ‘your little one is there asleep.’
The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwell-
ing, had at its farther end, against the wall, a large bed
without curtains, while a kneading-trough took up the
side by the window, one pane of which was mended with a

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