rts the grapes should not be ripe; the wine turns oily as soon as spring comes." "Then it is very thin wine?"
"There are wines poorer even than these. The grapes must be gathered while green."
Etc.
Or a miller would call out:--
"Are we responsible for what is in the sacks?
We find in them a quantity of small seed which we cannot sift out, and which we are obliged to send through the mill-stones; there are tares, fennel, vetches, hempseed, fox-tail, and a host of other weeds, not to mention pebbles, which abound in certain wheat, especially in Breton wheat.
I am not fond of grinding Breton wheat, any more than long-sawyers like to saw beams with nails in them.
You can judge of the bad dust that makes in grinding.
And then people complain of the flour.
They are in the wrong.
The flour is no fault of ours."
In a space between two windows a mower, who was seated at table with a landed proprietor who was fixing on a price for some meadow work to be performed in the spring, was saying:--
"It does no harm to have the grass wet.
It cuts better. Dew is a good thing, sir.
It makes no difference with that grass. Your grass is young and very hard to cut still.
It''s terribly tender. It yields before the iron."
Etc.
Cosette was in her usual place, seated on the cross-bar of the kitchen table near the chimney.