But this trouble, the only one she had outside, did not in any way change Denise's equable temper. It was especially in her department that she was seen at her best, in the midst of her little world of babies of all ages. She was passionately fond of children, and she could not have been placed in a better position. Sometimes there were fully fifty girls and as many boys there, quite a turbulent school, let loose in their growing coquettish desires. The mothers completely lost their heads. She, conciliating, smiling, had the little ones placed in a line, on chairs; and when there happened to be amongst the number a rosy-cheeked little angel, whose pretty face tempted her, she would insist on serving her herself, bringing the dress and trying it on the child's dimpled shoulders, with the tender precaution of an elder sister. There were fits of laughter, cries of joy, amidst the scolding voices of the mothers. Sometimes a little girl, already a grand lady, nine or ten years old, having a cloth jacket to try on, would stand studying it before a glass, turning round, with an absorbed air, her eyes sparkling with a desire to please. The counters were encumbered with the things unpacked, dresses in pink and blue Asian linen for children of from one to five years, blue sailor costumes, with plaited skirt and blouse, trimmed with fine cambric muslin, Louis XV. costumes, mantles, jackets, a pell-mell of narrow garments, stiffened in their infantine grace, something like the cloak-room of a regiment of big dolls, taken out of the wardrobes and given up to pillage. Denise had always a few sweets in her pockets, to appease the tears of some youngster in despair at not being able to carry off a pair of red trousers; and she lived there amongst these little ones as in her own family, feeling quite young again herself from the contact of all this innocence and freshness incessantly renewed around her skirts.