gg cream at the close of the meal.

Rose, whose heavy tread shook the floor as she paced round the table,
had not yet opened her mouth. At last she stopped behind the captain's
chair and asked in a gruff voice: "Cheese, sir?"

Burle started. "What, eh? Oh yes--cheese. Hold the plate tight."

He cut a piece of Gruyere, the girl watching him the while with her
narrow eyes. Laguitte laughed; Rose's unparalleled ugliness amused him
immensely. He whispered in the captain's ear, "She is ripping! There
never was such a nose and such a mouth! You ought to send her to the
colonel's someday as a curiosity. It would amuse him to see her."

More and more struck by this phenomenal ugliness, the major felt a
paternal desire to examine the girl more closely.

"Come here," he said, "I want some cheese too."

She brought the plate, and Laguitte, sticking the knife in the Gruyere,
stared at her, grinning the while because he discovered that she had
one nostril broader than the other. Rose gravely allowed herself to be
looked at, waiting till the gentleman had done laughing.

She removed the cloth and disappeared. Burle immediately went to sleep
in the chimney corner while the major and Mme Burle began to chat.
Charles had returned to his exercises. Quietude fell from the loft
ceiling; the quietude of a middle-class household gathered in concord
around their fireside. At nine o'clock Burle woke up, yawned and
announced that he was going off to bed; he apologized but declared that
he could not keep his eyes open. Half an hour later, when the major took
his leave, Mme Burle vainly called for Rose to light him downstairs;
the girl must have gone up to her room; she was, indeed, a regular hen,
snoring the round of the clock without waking.

"No need to disturb anybody," said Laguitte on the landing; "my legs are
not much better than yours, but if I get hold of the banisters I shan't
break any bones. Now, my dear lady, I leave you happy; your troubles are
ended at last. I watched Burle closely, and I'll take my oath that he's
guileless as a child. Dash it--after all, it was high time for Petticoat
Burle to reform; he was going downhill fast."

The major went away fully satisfied with the house and its inmates;
the walls were of glass and could harbor no equivocal conduct. What
particularly delighted him in his friend's return to virtue was that it
absolved him from the obligation of verifying the accounts. Nothing was
more distasteful