er Antoine knows it just as
well as any man. Don't I see, good as he is, every day of my life, with
what a different look he blesses the fair young maidens from that with
which he blesses the wrinkled old women. There is no use minding it.
It can't be helped. But things might as well be called by their right
names."

Marie sat down on a garden bench, and reflected. So the good Aunt
Hibba's birthday was next month, and there would be nobody to keep it
for her in this strange country. "How can we find out?" thought Marie,
"and give her a pleasure."

In summer weather, Father Antoine took his simple dinners on the porch.
It was cool there, and the vines and flowers gave to the little nook a
certain air of elegance which Father Antoine enjoyed without recognizing
why. On this evening Marie lingered after she had removed the table.
She fidgeted about, picking up a leaf here and there, and looking at her
master, till he perceived that she had something on her mind.

"What is it, Marie?" he asked.

"Oh, M'sieur Antoine!" she replied, "it is about the good Aunt Hibba's
birthday. Could you not ask her when is the day? and it should be a
_fete_ day, if we only knew it; there is not one that would not be glad
to help make it beautiful."

"Eh, my Marie, what is it then that you plan? The people in the country
from which she comes have no _fetes_. It might be that she would think
it a folly," answered Father Antoine, by no means sure that Hetty would
like such a testimonial.

"All the more, then, she would like it," said Marie. "I have watched
her. It is delight to her when they dance about the spring, and she has
the great love for flowers."

So Father Antoine, by a little circumlocution, discovered when the
birthday would come, and told Marie; and Marie began straightway to go
back and forth in the village, with a pleased air of mystery.

XIV.

The birthday fell on a day in June. It so happened that Hetty was later
than usual in leaving her patients that night; and her purpose had been
to go home by the nearest way, and not pass through the Square. The
villagers had feared this, and had forestalled her; at the turning
where she would have left the main road, she found waiting for her the
swiftest-footed urchin in all St. Mary's, little Pierre Michaud. The
readiest witted, too, and of the freest tongue, and he was charged to
bring Aunt Hibba by the way of the Square, but by no means to tell her
the reason.

"And