or four small factories, built on the banks of the
river, where the hands were at work from six in the morning till ten at
night, Sundays included. There was not much intellectual life here; a
professor would have little chance of making a living.

At first Minima, and I took long walks together into the country
surrounding Noireau, a beautiful country, even in November. Once out of
the vapor lying in the valley, at the bottom of which the town was
built, the atmosphere showed itself as exquisitely clear, with no smoke
in it, except the fine blue smoke of wood-fire. We could distinguish the
shapes of trees standing out against the horizon, miles and miles away;
while between us and it lay slopes of brown woodland and green pastures,
with long rows of slim poplars, the yellow leaves clinging to them
still, and winding round them, like garlands on a May-pole. But this
pleasure was a costly one, for it awoke pangs of hunger, which I was
compelled to appease by drawing upon my rapidly-emptying purse. We
learned that it was necessary to stay in-doors, and cultivate a small
appetite.

"Am I getting very thin?" asked Minima one day, as she held up her
transparent hand against the light; "how thin do you think I could get
without dying, Aunt Nelly?"

"Oh! a great deal thinner, my darling," I said, kissing the little
fingers, My heart was bound up in the child. I had been so lonely
without her, that now her constant companionship, her half-womanly,
half-babyish prattle seemed necessary to me. There was no longer any
question in my mind as to whether I could leave her. I only wondered
what I should do when my year was run out, and only one of those four of
hers, for which these wretches had received the payment.

"Some people can get very thin indeed," she went on, with her shrewd,
quaint smile; "I've heard the boys at school talk about it. One of them
had seen a living skeleton, that was all skin and bone, and no flesh. I
shouldn't like to be a living skeleton, and be made a show of. Do you
think I ever shall be, if I stay here four years? Perhaps they'd take me
about as a show."

"Why, you are talking nonsense, Minima," I answered.

"Am I?" she said, wistfully, as if the idea really troubled her; "I
dream of it often and often. I can feel all my bones now, and count
them, when I'm in bed. Some of them are getting very sharp. The boys
used to say they'd get as sharp as knives sometimes, and cut through the
skin. But fathe