The salon was a little room about eight feet by ten, silkily furnished. Besides being the salon, it was clearly also the _salle à manger_, and when one person had sat down therein it was full. Cosette took Henry's hat and coat and umbrella and pressed him into a chair by the shoulders, and then gave him the full history of her unparalleled difficulties with the exterminated servant. She looked quite a different Cosette now from the Cosette of the previous evening. Her black hair was loose; her face pale, and her lips also a little pale; and she was draped from neck to feet in a crimson peignoir, very fluffy.
'And now I must buy the lunch,' she said. 'I must go myself. Excuse me.'
She disappeared into the adjoining room, the bedroom, and Henry could hear the _fracas_ of silk and stuff. 'What do you eat for lunch?' she cried out.
'Oh! _Que les hommes sont bêtes!_' she murmured, her voice seemingly lost in the folds of a dress. 'One must choose. Say.'
She reappeared in a plain black frock, with a reticule in her hand, and at the same moment a fox-terrier wandered in from somewhere.
'_Mimisse!_' she cried in ecstasy, snatching up the animal and kissing it. 'You want to go with your mamma? Yess. What do you think of my _fox_? She is real English. _Elle est si gentille avec sa mère! Ma Mimisse! Ma petite fille!_ My little girl! _Dites, mon ami_'--she abandoned the dog--'have you some money for our lunch? Five francs?'
'That enough?' Henry asked, handing her the piece.
'Thank you,' she said. '_Viens, Mimisse._'
'You haven't put your hat on,' Henry informed her.
'_Mais, mon pauvre ami_, is it that you take me for a duchess? I come from the _ouvriers_, me, the working peoples. I avow it. Never can I do my shops in a hat. I should blush.'
And with a tremendous flutter, scamper, and chatter, Cosette and her _fox_ departed, leaving Henry solitary to guard the flat.
He laughed to himself, at himself. 'Well,' he murmured, looking down into the court, 'I suppose----'
Cosette came back with a tin of sardines, a piece of steak, some French beans, two cakes of the kind called 'nuns,' a bunch of grapes, and a segment of Brie cheese. She put on an apron, and went into the kitchenlet, and began to cook, giving Henry instructions the while how to lay the table and where to find the things. Then she brought him the coffee-mill full of coffee, and told him to grind it.