ste may be
back to-morrow, and with more money for staying so long. No, no; fear
not, Delima! _Le bon Dieu_ manages all for the best."

"That is true; for so I have heard always," answered Delima, with
conviction; "but sometimes _le bon Dieu_ requires one's inside to pray
very loud. Certainly I trust, like you, _Memere_; but it would be
pleasant if He would send the food the day before."

"Ah, you are too anxious, like little Baptiste here," and the old
woman glanced at the boy sitting by the cradle. "Young folks did not
talk so when I was little. Then we did not think there was danger in
trusting _Monsieur le Cure_ when he told us to take no heed of the
morrow. But now! to hear them talk, one might think they had never
heard of _le bon Dieu_. The young people think too much, for sure.
Trust in the good God, I say. Breakfast and dinner and supper too we
shall all have to-morrow."

"Yes, _Memere_," replied the boy, who was called little Baptiste to
distinguish him from his father. "_Le bon Dieu_ will send an excellent
breakfast, sure enough, if I get up very early, and find some good
_dore_ (pickerel) and catfish on the night-line. But if I did not bait
the hooks, what then? Well, I hope there will be more to-morrow than
this morning, anyway."

"There were enough," said the old woman, severely. "Have we not had
plenty all day, Delima?"

Delima made no answer. She was in doubt about the plenty which her
mother-in-law spoke of. She wondered whether small Andre and Odillon
and 'Toinette, whose heavy breathing she could hear through the thin
partition, would have been sleeping so peacefully had little Baptiste
not divided his share among them at supper-time, with the excuse that
he did not feel very well?

Delima was young yet,--though little Baptiste was such a big boy,--and
would have rested fully on the positively expressed trust of her
mother-in-law, in spite of the empty flour barrel, if she had not
suspected little Baptiste of sitting there hungry.

However, he was such a strange boy, she soon reflected, that perhaps
going empty did not make him feel bad! Little Baptiste was so decided
in his ways, made what in others would have been sacrifices so much as
a matter of course, and was so much disgusted on being offered credit
or sympathy in consequence, that his mother, not being able to
understand him, was not a little afraid of him.

He was not very formidable in appearance, however, that clumsy boy of
fourt