ws, he said:

"Did you know that Henry Monnier was one of the most untiring fishermen
on the banks of the Epte?"

"No, I did not know it."

"And Bouffe, my boy, Bouffe was a painter on glass."

"You are joking!"

"No, indeed. How is it you do not know these things?"

THE ADOPTED SON

The two cottages stood beside each other at the foot of a hill near
a little seashore resort. The two peasants labored hard on the
unproductive soil to rear their little ones, and each family had four.

Before the adjoining doors a whole troop of urchins played and tumbled
about from morning till night. The two eldest were six years old, and
the youngest were about fifteen months; the marriages, and afterward the
births, having taken place nearly simultaneously in both families.

The two mothers could hardly distinguish their own offspring among the
lot, and as for the fathers, they were altogether at sea. The eight
names danced in their heads; they were always getting them mixed up;
and when they wished to call one child, the men often called three names
before getting the right one.

The first of the two cottages, as you came up from the bathing beach,
Rolleport, was occupied by the Tuvaches, who had three girls and one
boy; the other house sheltered the Vallins, who had one girl and three
boys.

They all subsisted frugally on soup, potatoes and fresh air. At seven
o'clock in the morning, then at noon, then at six o'clock in the
evening, the housewives got their broods together to give them their
food, as the gooseherds collect their charges. The children were seated,
according to age, before the wooden table, varnished by fifty years of
use; the mouths of the youngest hardly reaching the level of the table.
Before them was placed a bowl filled with bread, soaked in the water in
which the potatoes had been boiled, half a cabbage and three onions; and
the whole line ate until their hunger was appeased. The mother herself
fed the smallest.

A small pot roast on Sunday was a feast for all; and the father on this
day sat longer over the meal, repeating: "I wish we could have this
every day."

One afternoon, in the month of August, a phaeton stopped suddenly in
front of the cottages, and a young woman, who was driving the horses,
said to the gentleman sitting at her side:

"Oh, look at all those children, Henri! How pretty they are, tumbling
about in the dust, like that!"

The man did not answer, accustomed to these o