of her, and said: "Then it is my fault that you have no
children?" She gave him no answer, and he began to walk up and down
again, and then, stopping again, he continued: "How old is your child?"
"Just six," she whispered. "Why did you not tell me about it?" he asked.
"How could I?" she replied, with a sigh.

He remained standing, motionless. "Come, get up," he said. She got up,
with some difficulty, and then, when she was standing on the floor, he
suddenly began to laugh, with his hearty laugh of his good days, and
seeing how surprised she was, he added: "Very well, we will go and fetch
the child, as you and I can have none together."

She was so scared that, if she had the strength, she would assuredly
have run away, but the farmer rubbed his hands and said: "I wanted to
adopt one, and now we have found one. I asked the Cure about an orphan,
some time ago."

Then, still laughing, he kissed his weeping and agitated wife on both
cheeks, and shouted out, as if she could not hear him: "Come along,
mother, we will go and see whether there is any soup left; I should not
mind a plateful."

She put on her petticoat, and they went down stairs; and while she was
kneeling in front of the fire-place, and lighting the fire under the
saucepan, he continued to walk up and down the kitchen in long strides,
and said:

"Well, I am really glad at this: I am not saying it for form's sake, but
I am glad, I am really very glad."

MAMMA STIRLING

Tall, slim, looking almost naked under her transparent dress of gauze,
which fell in straight folds as far as the gold bracelets on her slender
wrists, with languor in her rich voice, and something undulating and
feline in the rhythmical swing of her wrist and hips. Tatia Caroly was
singing one of those sweet Creole songs which call up some far distant
fairy-like country, and unknown caresses, for which the lips remain
always thirsting.

Footit, the clown, was leaning against the piano with a blackened face,
and with his mouth that looked like a red gash from a saber cut, and his
wide open eyes, he expressed feelings of the most extravagant emotion,
while some niggers squatted on the ground, and accompanied the orchestra
by strumming on some yellow, empty gourds.

But what made the woman and the children in the pantomime of the "New
Circus" laugh most, was the incessant quarrel between an enormous Danish
hound and a poor old supernumerary, who was blackened like a negro
minstre