be improved," declared Bayard, "by taking the air;
shouldn't it, Mimi?"

And while pretty Madame Bayard, having pinned up her skirts, went out
with the children and the nurse to pick flowers in a neighboring field,
the druggist, who was less ambitious, treated the saloon-keeping cousin
to a glass of vermouth, seated at the billiard-table, which was covered
with dead flies. They breakfasted under a vineless arbor, which the hot
noonday sun riddled with its rays. But what of that? They were pleased
and contented all the same. Madame Bayard had hung her hat on the
lattice; and her husband, wearing a bargeman's straw helmet, which had
been lent to him by the saloon-keeper, cut up the duck in the best of
spirits. Little Leon and Norine, who had immediately become the best of
friends, emptied the salad-bowl of its cream-cheese. Then they all
romped in the grass, went boating on the stream, and, intoxicated with
the fresh country air, the indwellers of the city, coming from the close
Paris streets, pushed to its fullest extreme this idyl in the fashion of
Paul de Kock.

[Illustration]

For, yes; there was a moment, as they came back in the boat, in a
delicious sunset, when tinted clouds floated in a glowing sky, when
Madame Bayard--the serious Madame Bayard--whose frown turned to stone
the shop-boys of the druggist, sang the air called "To the Shores of
France," to the rhythmic fall of the oars, plied by her husband in his
shirt-sleeves. They dined in the arbor where they had breakfasted, but
the second repast was a shade less happy. The night-moths, which dashed
in to burn themselves at the candles, frightened the children; and
Madame Bayard was so tired that she could not even guess the simple
rebus on her dessert napkin.

Never mind; it has been a good day; and on their return in a first-class
carriage--this was not a time for petty economies--Madame Bayard, with
her head on her husband's shoulder, watching Leon and Norine, limp with
sleep on the lap of the nurse, half asleep herself, murmured to her
husband, in a happy voice:

"See, Ferdinand; we have done well to take the little one. She will be a
comrade for Leon. They will be like brother and sister."

III.

In fact, they did thus grow up together.

They were most kind-hearted people, these Bayards. They made no
difference between the humble orphan and their own dear boy, who would
one day in the firm of "Bayard & Son" work monopolies in rhubarb and
corners