The job was not an easy one because she had two little tots, her brother Jules and her sister Henriette, aged three and five, to watch all day long while sweeping and cleaning.
Ever since Bijard had killed his wife with a kick in the stomach, Lalie had become the little mother of them all.

Without saying a word, and of her own accord, she filled the place of one who had gone, to the extent that her brute of a father, no doubt to complete the resemblance, now belabored the daughter as he had formerly belabored the mother.

Whenever he came home drunk, he required a woman to massacre.

He did not even notice that Lalie was quite little; he would not have beaten some old trollop harder.

Little Lalie, so thin it made you cry, took it all without a word of complaint in her beautiful, patient eyes.