"I don't know at all; advise me, will you?"
For the last minute or two Bijou had seemed to be turning something over in her mind.
"If you like," she said at last, "we might be dressed in the same way, you and I; that would be awfully nice!"
"My dress does not exist yet; it is a thing of the future! It will be pink, of course--pink crêpe--quite simple--straight skirts, cut like a ballet-dancer's skirts, so that there will be no hem to make them heavy, three skirts, one over the other, all of the same length, of course--three, that makes it cloudy-looking; more than that smothers you up; and it will fall in large, round _godets_. Then there will be a little gathered bodice, very simple; little puffed sleeves, with a lot of ribbon bows and ends hanging, and then ribbon round the waist, with two long bows and long ends--ribbon as wide as your hand, not any wider.'
"And it would suit you wonderfully well."
"But shouldn't you mind my being dressed like you?" asked Jeanne, rather timidly.
"On the contrary, I should love it! Would you like us to make the dress here? I would try it on, and like that we should be sure that it was right."
"How sweet you are! Plenty of other girls in your place would only trouble about themselves."
"Listen, supposing you wrote for the crêpe to be sent to-morrow." And then she added laughing, "M. de Bernès asked me yesterday evening if I had not any commissions for Pont-sur-Loire. I might have given him that to do!"
"He would have been slightly embarrassed."
"Why? It is easy enough to buy pink crêpe with a pattern."
Mère Rafut, who had been busy sewing, without uttering a word, but just pulling her needle through the work with a quick regular movement, now lifted her face, all wrinkled like an old apple, and remarked drily:
"Without a pattern. Oh, no, it isn't he who'd be embarrassed! Why, he always helps to choose Mademoiselle Lisette Renaud's dresses."
"Lisette Renaud, the singer?" asked Jeanne eagerly, whilst Denyse, very much taken up with her work, did not appear to have heard.
"Well, that's what I meant. Ah! and so M. de Bernès knows her?"
"I should just think he does. He's known her more than a year and a half."
"Ah!" said Jeanne, evidently interested, "she is so pretty, Lisette Renaud! I saw her in _Mignon_ and in the _Dragons de Villars_ too."