So I worked on in
silence, never turning toward this embodiment of one of Boutet do
Monvel's drawings, whose absorbed face I could see out of one corner
of my eye.
Then a ripple of laughter broke the stillness, and a little finger was
thrust out, stopping within a hair's-breadth of the dot of Chinese
white, still wet, which topped my burnt-umber figure.
"Tres drole, Monsieur!"
The voice was sweeter than the laugh. One of those flute-like,
bird-throated voices that children often have who live in the open all
their lives, chasing butterflies or gathering wild flowers.
Then came a halloo from the greensward. The priest was coming toward us,
calling out, as he walked:
"Susette! Susette!"
He, too, underwent a change. The long, ivory-black cassock, so
unmistakable in the atmospheric perspective, became an ordinary
frock-coat; the white band of a collar developed into the regulation
secular pattern, and the silk hat, although of last year's shape,
conformed less closely in its lines to one belonging exclusively to the
clergy.
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