on a pillion,
trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the
country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from
the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois head-dress so
that it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head
he saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently
under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from
time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would
have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the
road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling
with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he
felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was
afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went
directly home.

Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock. The
neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife.

The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not
having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should
look over her house.

V.

THE NEW MENAGE.

The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road.
Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black
leather cap, and on the floor in a corner, were a pair of leggings still
covered with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment that was both
dining and sitting room. A canary-yellow paper, relieved at the top by a
garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the
badly-stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung
crosswise the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a
clock with a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate
candlesticks under oval shades. On the other side of the passage was
Charles's consulting-room, a little room about six paces wide, with a
table, three chairs, and an office-chair. Volumes of the "Dictionary of
Medical Science," uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the
successive sales through which they had gone, occupied almost alone the
six shelves of a deal bookcase. The smell of melted butter penetrated
the thin walls when he saw patients, just as in the kitchen one could
hear the people coughing in the consulting-room and recounting their
whole histories. Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a