“ Oh, how cold it is!”
“ Poor woman!” said Oudarde, with great compassion, “would you like a little fire?”
She shook her head in token of refusal.
“ Well,” resumed Oudarde, presenting her with a flagon; “here is some hippocras which will warm you; drink it.”
Again she shook her head, looked at Oudarde fixedly and replied, “Water.”
Oudarde persisted,—“No, sister, that is no beverage for January. You must drink a little hippocras and eat this leavened cake of maize, which we have baked for you.”
She refused the cake which Mahiette offered to her, and said, “Black bread.”
“ Come,” said Gervaise, seized in her turn with an impulse of charity, and unfastening her woolen cloak, “here is a cloak which is a little warmer than yours.”
She refused the cloak as she had refused the flagon
