rvous. Do not laugh; it is a very serious matter.
We wish to thank you for having been, ever since our arrival here, so
good to us both."

"Oh, Miss Percival, pray, it is I who--"

"Oh, do not interrupt me, you will quite confuse me. I do not know how
to get through with it. I maintain, besides, that the thanks are due
from us, not from you. We arrived here two strangers. We have been
fortunate enough immediately to find friends. Yes, friends. You have
taken us by the hand, you have led us to our farmers, to our keepers;
while your godfather took us to his poor--and everywhere you were so
much beloved that from their confidence in you, they began, on your
recommendation, to like us a little. You are adored about here; do you
know that?"

"I was born here--all these good people have known me from my infancy,
and are grateful to me for what my grandfather and father did for
them; and then I am of their race, the race of the peasants; my
great-grandfather was a laborer at Bargecourt, a village two miles from
here."

"Oh! oh! you appear very proud of that!"

"Neither proud nor ashamed."

"I beg your pardon, you made a little movement of pride. Well, I can
tell you that my mother's great-grandfather was a farmer in Brittany.
He went to Canada at the end of the last century, when Canada was still
French. And you love very much this place where you were born?"

"Very much. Perhaps I shall soon be obliged to leave it."

"Why?"

"When I get promotion, I shall have to exchange into another regiment,
and I shall wander from garrison to garrison; but certainly, when I am
an old commandant or old colonel, on half-pay, I shall come back, and
live and die here, in the little house that was my father's."

"Always quite alone?"

"Why quite alone? I certainly hope not."

"You intend to marry?"

"Yes, certainly."

"You are trying to marry?"

"No; one may think of marrying, but one ought not to try to marry."

"And yet there are people who do try. Come, I can answer for that, and
you even; people have wished to marry you."

"How do you know that?"

"Oh! I know all your little affairs so well; you are what they call a
good match, and I repeat it, they have wished to marry you."

"Who told you that?"

"Monsieur le Cure."

"Then he was very wrong," said Jean, with a certain sharpness.

"No, no, he was not wrong. If any one has been to blame it is I. I
soon discovered that your godfather was never so happy as when