he chimney-corner. They had a doll, which they turned over and over on their knees with all sorts of joyous chatter.
From time to time Cosette raised her eyes from her knitting, and watched their play with a melancholy air.
Eponine and Azelma did not look at Cosette.
She was the same as a dog to them.
These three little girls did not yet reckon up four and twenty years between them, but they already represented the whole society of man; envy on the one side, disdain on the other.
The doll of the Thenardier sisters was very much faded, very old, and much broken; but it seemed none the less admirable to Cosette, who had never had a doll in her life, a real doll, to make use of the expression which all children will understand.
All at once, the Thenardier, who had been going back and forth in the room, perceived that Cosette''s mind was distracted, and that, instead of working, she was paying attention to the little ones at their play.
"Ah!
I''ve caught you at it!" she cried.
"So that''s the way you work! I''ll make you work to the tune of the whip; that I will."
The stranger turned to the Thenardier, without quitting his chair.
"Bah, Madame," he said, with an almost timid air, "let her play!"
Such a wish expressed by a traveller who had eaten a slice of mutton and had drunk a couple of bottles of wine with his supper, and who had not the air of being frightfully poor, would have been equivalent to an order.