riosity, for they
listened, and spoke but little.

Samuel Chapdelaine, who was meeting them for the first time, deemed
himself called upon to put them through a catechism in the ingenuous
Canadian fashion.

"So you have come here to till the land. How do you like Canada?"

"It is a beautiful country, new and so vast ... In the
summer-time there are many flies, and the winters are trying; but I
suppose that one gets used to these things in time."

The father it was who made reply, his sons only nodding their heads
in assent with eyes glued to the floor. Their appearance alone would
have served to distinguish them from the other dwellers in the
village, but as they spoke the gap widened, and the words that fell
from their lips had a foreign ring. There was none of the slowness
of the Canadian speech, nor of that indefinable accent found in no
comer of France, which is only a peasant blend of the different
pronunciations of former emigrants. They used words and turns of
phrase one never hears in Quebec, even in the towns, and which to
these simple men seemed fastidious and wonderfully refined.

"Before coming to these parts were you farmers in your own country?"

"No."

"What trade then did you follow?"

The Frenchman hesitated a moment before replying; possibly thinking
that what he was about to say would be novel, and hard for them to
understand. "I was a tuner myself, a piano-tuner; my two sons here
were clerks, Edmond in an office, Pierre in a shop."

Clerks--that was plain enough for anyone; but their minds were a
little hazy as to the father's business.

However Ephrem Surprenant chimed in with.--"Piano-tuner; that was
it, just so!" And his glance at Conrad Neron his neighbour was a
trifle superior and challenging, as though intimating.--"You would
not believe me, and maybe you don't know what it means, but now you
see ..."

"Piano-tuner," Samuel Chapdelaine echoed in turn, slowly grasping
the meaning of the words. "And is that a good trade? Do you earn
handsome wages? Not too handsome, eh! ... At any rate you are well
educated, you and your sons; you can read and write and cipher? And
here am I, not able even to read!"

"Nor I!" struck in Ephrem Surprenant, and Conrad Neron and Egide
Racicot added: "Nor I!" "Nor I!" in chorus, whereupon the whole of
them broke out laughing.

A motion of the Frenchman's hand told them indulgently that they
could very well dispense with these accomplishments; to hims