now standing in the dining room, breakfasting off a cup of milk.

'You really ought to prevent your sister from scattering bread in the
church,' said La Teuse on coming in. 'It was last winter she hit upon
that pretty prank. She said the sparrows were cold, and that God might
well give them some food. You see, she'll end by making us sleep with
all her fowls and rabbits.'

'We should be all the warmer,' pleasantly replied the young priest. 'You
are always grumbling, La Teuse. Do let our poor Desiree pet her animals.
She has no other pleasure, poor innocent!'

The servant took her stand in the centre of the room.

'I do believe you yourself wouldn't mind a bit if the magpies actually
built their nests in the church. You never can see anything, everything
seems just what it ought to be to you. Your sister is precious lucky
in having had you to take charge of her when you left the seminary. No
father, no mother. I should like to know who would let her mess about as
she does in a farmyard.'

Then softening, she added in a gentler tone: 'To be sure, it would be
a pity to cross her. She hasn't a touch of malice in her. She's like
a child of ten, although she's one of the finest grown girls in the
neighbourhood. And I have to put her to bed, as you know, every night,
and send her to sleep with stories, just like a little child.'

Abbe Mouret had remained standing, finishing the cup of milk he
held between his fingers, which were slightly reddened by the chill
atmosphere of the dining-room--a large room with painted grey walls, a
floor of square tiles, and having no furniture beyond a table and a few
chairs. La Teuse picked up a napkin which she had laid at a corner of
the table in readiness for breakfast.

'It isn't much linen you dirty,' she muttered. 'One would think you
could never sit down, that you are always just about to start off. Ah!
if you had known Monsieur Caffin, the poor dead priest whose place
you have taken! What a man he was for comfort! Why, he couldn't have
digested his food, if he had eaten standing. A Norman he was, from
Canteleu, like myself. I don't thank him, I tell you, for having brought
me to such a wild-beast country as this. When first we came, O, Lord!
how bored we were! But the poor priest had had some uncomfortable tales
going about him at home.... Why, sir, didn't you sweeten your milk,
then? Aren't those the two lumps of sugar?'

The priest put down his cup.

'Yes, I must have forgo