thout eating, have you not game in
your bag and fire to cook it?"

"By Jove, that's a good idea! But how about the present to my future
father-in-law?"

"You have six partridges and a hare! I suppose you do not need all of
them to satisfy your appetite."

"But how can we cook them without a spit or andirons. They will be
burned to a cinder!"

"Not at all," said little Marie; "I warrant that I can cook them for you
under the cinders without a taste of smoke. Have you never caught larks
in the fields, and cooked them between two stones? Oh! that is true--I
keep forgetting that you have never been a shepherd. Come, pluck the
partridge. Not so hard! You will tear the skin."

"You might be plucking the other to show me how!"

"Then you wish to eat two? What an ogre you are! They are all plucked. I
am going to cook them."

"You would make a perfect little sutler's girl, Marie, but unhappily you
have no canteen, and I shall have to drink water from this pool!"

"You would like some wine, would you not? Possibly you might prefer
coffee. You imagine yourself under the trees at the fair. Call out the
host. Some wine for the good husbandman of Belair!"

"You little witch, you are making fun of me! Would not you drink some
wine if you had it?"

"I? At Mother Rebec's, with you to-night, I drank some for the second
time in my life. But if you are very good, I shall give you a bottle
almost full, and excellent too."

"What? Marie, I verily believe you are a witch!"

"Were you not foolish enough to ask for two bottles of wine at the inn?
You and your boy drank one, and the other you set before me. I hardly
drank three drops, yet you paid for both without looking."

"What then?"

"Why, I put the full one in my basket, because I thought that you or
your child would be thirsty on the journey. And here it is."

"You are the most thoughtful girl I have ever met. Although the poor
child was crying when we left the inn, that did not prevent her from
thinking of others more than of herself. Little Marie, the man who
marries you will be no fool."

"I hope not, for I am not fond of fools. Come, eat up your partridges;
they are done to a turn; and for want of bread, you must be satisfied
with chestnuts."

"Where the deuce did you find chestnuts, too?"

"It is extraordinary! All along the road I picked them off the branches
as we went along, and filled my pockets."

"And are they cooked, too?"

"Where would my wits have