s feeling that first homesickness which succeeds
transplanting. The face of the young worker in stone interested her; the
idea of it all was romantic; the possibilities of the young man's life
opened out before her. Why should not she give him his real start,
win his gratitude, help him to his fame, and then, when it was won, be
pointed out as a discoverer and a patron?

All these things flashed through her mind as they were introduced. The
young man did not read the look in her eyes, but there was one other
person in the crowd about the church steps who did read it, whose heart
beat furiously, whose foot tapped the ground angrily--a black-haired,
brown-eyed farmer's daughter, who instantly hated the yellow hair and
rosy and golden face of the blue-eyed London lady; who could, that
instant, have torn the silk gown from her graceful figure.

She was not disturbed without reason. And for the moment, even when she
heard impertinent and incredulous fellows pooh-poohing the monument, and
sharpening their rather dull wits upon its corners, she did not open her
lips, when otherwise she would have spoken her mind with a vengeance;
for Jeanne Marchand had a reputation for spirit and temper, and she
spared no one when her blood was up. She had a touch of the vixen--an
impetuous, loving, forceful mademoiselle, in marked contrast to the
rather ascetic Francois, whose ways were more refined than his origin
might seem to warrant.

"Sapre!" said Duclosse the mealman of the monument; "it's like a timber
of cheese stuck up. What's that to make a fuss about?"

"Fig of Eden," muttered Jules Marmotte, with one eye on Jeanne, "any
fool could saw a better-looking thing out of ice!"

"Fish," said fat Caroche the butcher, "that Francois has a rattle in his
capote. He'd spend his time better chipping bones on my meat-block."

But Jeanne could not bear this--the greasy whopping butcher-man!

"What, what, the messy stupid Caroche, who can't write his name," she
said in a fury; "the sausage-potted Caroche, who doesn't remember that
Francois Lagarre made his brother's tombstone, and charged him nothing
for the verses he wrote for it, nor for the Agnus Dei he carved on it!
No, Caroche does not remember his brother Ba'tiste the fighter, as brave
as Caroche is a coward! He doesn't remember the verse on Ba'tiste's
tombstone, does he?"

Francois heard this speech, and his eyes lighted tenderly as he looked
at Jeanne: he loved this fury of defenc