prospered wonderfully, and for five
miles around people talked of "Master Vallin's servant," and the farmer
himself said everywhere: "That girl is worth more than her weight in
gold."

But time passed by, and her wages remained the same. Her hard work was
accepted as something that was due from every good servant, and as a mere
token of good will; and she began to think rather bitterly that if the
farmer could put fifty or a hundred crowns extra into the bank every
month, thanks to her, she was still only earning her two hundred francs a
year, neither more nor less; and so she made up her mind to ask for an
increase of wages. She went to see the schoolmaster three times about it,
but when she got there, she spoke about something else. She felt a kind
of modesty in asking for money, as if it were something disgraceful; but,
at last, one day, when the farmer was having breakfast by himself in the
kitchen, she said to him, with some embarrassment, that she wished to
speak to him particularly. He raised his head in surprise, with both his
hands on the table, holding his knife, with its point in the air, in one,
and a piece of bread in the other, and he looked fixedly at, the girl,
who felt uncomfortable under his gaze, but asked for a week's holiday, so
that she might get away, as she was not very well. He acceded to her
request immediately, and then added, in some embarrassment himself:

"When you come back, I shall have something to say to you myself."

PART III

The child was nearly eight months old, and she did not recognize it. It
had grown rosy and chubby all over, like a little roll of fat. She threw
herself on it, as if it had been some prey, and kissed it so violently
that it began to scream with terror; and then she began to cry herself,
because it did not know her, and stretched out its arms to its nurse as
soon as it saw her. But the next day it began to know her, and laughed
when it saw her, and she took it into the fields, and ran about excitedly
with it, and sat down under the shade of the trees; and then, for the
first time in her life, she opened her heart to somebody, although he
could not understand her, and told him her troubles; how hard her work
was, her anxieties and her hopes, and she quite tired the child with the
violence of her caresses.

She took the greatest pleasure in handling it, in washing and dressing
it, for it seemed to her that all this was the confirmation of her
maternity;