The boys here are
not so nice as they used to be at home. Pierre says I'm a little pagan,
and that's not nice, Aunt Nelly. He says I must be baptized by Monsieur
Laurentie, and be prepared for my first communion, before I can be as
good as he is. The boys at home used to think me quite as good as them,
and better. I asked Monsieur Laurentie if I ought to be baptized over
again, and he only smiled, and said I must be as good a little girl as I
could be, and it did not much matter. But Pierre, and all the rest,
think I'm not as good as them, and I don't like it."

I could not help laughing, like Monsieur Laurentie, at Minima's
distress. Yet it was not without foundation. Here we were heretics amid
the orthodox, and I felt it myself. Though Monsieur le Cure never
alluded to it in the most distant manner, there was a difference between
us and the simple village-folk in Ville-en-bois which would always mark
us as strangers in blood and creed.

"I think," continued Minima, with a shrewd expression on her face,
which was beginning to fill up and grow round in its outlines, "I think,
when you are quite well again, we'd better be going on somewhere to try
our fortunes. It never does, you know, to stop too long in the same
place. I'm quite sure we shall never meet the prince here, and I don't
think we shall find any treasure. Besides, if we began to dig they'd all
know, and want to go shares. I shouldn't mind going shares with Monsieur
Laurentie, but I would not go shares with Pierre. Of course when we've
made our fortunes we'll come back, and we'll build Monsieur Laurentie a
palace of marble, and put Turkey carpets on all the floors, and have
fountains and statues, and all sorts of things, and give him a cook to
cook splendid dinners. But we wouldn't stay here always if we were very,
very rich; would you, Aunt Nelly?"

"Has anybody told you that I am rich?" I asked, with a passing feeling
of vexation.

"Oh, no," she said, laughing heartily, "I should know better than that.
You're very poor, my darling auntie, but I love you all the same. We
shall be rich some day, of course. It's all coming right, by-and-by."

Her hand was stroking my face, and I drew it to my lips and kissed it
tenderly. I had scarcely realized before what a change had come over my
circumstances.

"But I am not poor any longer, my little girl," I said; "I am rich
now.".

"Very rich?" she asked, eagerly.

"Very rich," I repeated.

"And we shall never