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He had heard the glad tidings, this old wrinkled man, and he clacked his whip to let others know, and gave the glad-eye a watery, wicked old eye to half a dozen midinettes who came dancing along the rue St. Honore. They knew without his white hat, and the clack of his whip. The ichor of the air had got into their blood.
Bevies of young sewing-girls, midinettes, collected at the open windows and on the balconies of the Rue de la Paix, cheering, waving their handkerchiefs at the youthful patriots, and throwing down upon them handfuls of flowers and garlands that had decked the fronts of the shops. The crowd was not particularly noisy or boisterous. No cries of "On to Berlin!" or "Down with the Germans!" were heard.
In the luncheon hour crowds of midinettes surrounded the singers, joining sometimes in the choruses, squealing with laughter at jests in verse not to be translated in sober English prose and finding a little moisture in their eyes after a song of sentiment which reminded them of the price which must be paid for glory by young men for whose homecoming they had waited through the winter and the spring.
Elegant women, whose beauty is known in the Paris salons, whose frivolity perhaps in the past was the main purpose of their lives, were now on a level with the peasant mothers of the French suburbs, and with the midinettes of Montmartre and their courage did not fail them so quickly. It was a tragic road.
The midinettes, the "cash" girls of the great department stores and millinery shops, had no money to contribute, so some one thought of giving them a chance to help the soldiers with their needles. It was purposed they should make cockades in the national colors. Every French girl is taught to sew; each is born with good taste.
Bearded little poilus, arm in arm from curb to curb, marched grinning down the center of the streets, capturing and kissing pretty midinettes, or surrounding officers and dancing madly; Audrey saw an Algerian, ragged and dirty from the battle-fields, kiss on both cheeks a portly British Admiral of the fleet, and was herself kissed by a French sailor, with extreme robustness and a slight tinge of vin ordinaire.
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