ace,' cried Albine, 'this is the place;' and she glided
beneath the willows.

Serge sat down by her side, his feet almost in the water. He glanced
round him, and murmured: 'You know everything, you know all the best
spots. One might almost think this was an island, ten feet square, right
in the middle of the sea.'

'Yes, indeed, we are quite at home,' she replied, as she gleefully
drummed the grass with her fists. 'It is altogether our own, and we are
going to do everything ourselves.' Then, as if struck by a brilliant
idea, she sprang towards him, and, with her face close to his, asked him
joyously: 'Will you be my husband? I will be your wife.'

He was delighted at the notion, and replied that he would gladly be
her husband, laughing even more loudly than she had done herself.
Then Albine suddenly became grave, and assumed the anxious air of a
housewife.

'You know,' she said, 'that it is I who will have to give the orders. We
will have breakfast as soon as you have laid the table.'

She gave him her orders in an imperious fashion. He had to stow all the
various articles which she extracted from her pockets into a hole in one
of the willows, which bole she called the cupboard. The rags
supplied the household linen, while the comb represented the toilette
necessaries. The needles and string were to be used for mending the
explorers' clothes. Provision for the inner man consisted of the little
bottle of wine and a few crusts which she had saved from yesterday. She
had, to be sure, some matches, by the aid of which she intended to cook
the fish they were going to catch.

When Serge had finished laying the table, the bottle of wine in the
centre, and three crusts grouped round it, he hazarded the observation
that the fare seemed to be scanty. But Albine shrugged her shoulders
with feminine superiority. And wading into the water, she said in a
severe tone, 'I will catch the fish; you can watch me.'

For half an hour she strenuously exerted herself in trying to catch some
of the little fishes with her hands. She had gathered up her petticoats
and fastened them together with a piece of string. And she advanced
quietly into the water, taking the greatest care not to disturb it. When
she was quite close to some tiny fish, that lay lurking between a couple
of pebbles, she thrust down her bare arm, made a wild grasp, and brought
her hand up again with nothing in it but sand and gravel. Serge then
broke out into noisy lau