The mother was to stay at home and take care of the
grandmother; but the children, all the children, were to have a holiday,
and to dine with Sidonia at his hotel.
It would have been quite impossible for the most respectable burgher,
even of the grand place of a Flemish city, to have sent his children on
a visit in trim more neat, proper, and decorous, than that in which
the Baroni family figured on the morrow, when they went to pay their
respects to their patron. The girls were in clean white frocks with
little black silk jackets, their hair beautifully tied and plaited, and
their heads uncovered, according to the fashion of the country: not an
ornament or symptom of tawdry taste was visible; not even a necklace,
although they necessarily passed their lives in fanciful or grotesque
attire; the boys, in foraging caps all of the same fashion, were dressed
in blouses of holland, with bands and buckles, their broad shirt collars
thrown over their shoulders. It is astonishing, as Baroni said, what
order and discipline will do; but how that wonderful house upon wheels
contrived to contain all these articles of dress, from the uniform of
the marshal of France to the diminutive blouse of little Michel, and how
their wearers always managed to issue from it as if they came forth
from the most commodious and amply-furnished mansion, was truly yet
pleasingly perplexing.
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