The girls were precocious in the pits; and he recalled the Lille work-girls whom he had waited for behind the factories, those bands of girls, corrupted at fourteen, in the abandonment of their wretchedness.
Les filles étaient précoces, aux fosses; et il se rappelait les ouvrieres de Lille, qu'il attendait derriere les fabriques, ces bandes de filles gâtées des quatorze ans, dans les abandons de la misere.