ed up with his feet in our faces,
scratching his fiddle? Now, the fiddle, Bonaventure--the fiddle would
just suit you. Ah, if you could play!" But the boy's quick anger so
flashed from his blue eyes that she checked herself and with
contemplative serenity added:

"Pity nobody else can play so well as that tiresome fellow. It was
positively silly, the way some girls stood listening to him last
night. I'd be ashamed, or, rather, too proud, to flatter such a
high-headed care-for-nobody. I wish he wasn't my cousin!"

Bonaventure, still incensed, remarked with quiet intensity that he
knew why she wished 'Thanase was not a cousin.

"It's no such a thing!" exclaimed Zosephine so forcibly that Madame
Sosthene's sunbonnet turned around, and a murmur of admonition came
from it. But the maiden was smiling and saying blithely to
Bonaventure:

"Oh, you--you can't even guess well." She was about to say more, but
suddenly hushed. Behind them a galloping horse drew near, softly
pattering along the turfy road. As he came abreast, he dropped into a
quiet trot.

The rider was a boyish yet manly figure in a new suit of gray
home-made linsey, the pantaloons thrust into the tops of his sturdy
russet boots, and the jacket ending underneath a broad leather belt
that carried a heavy revolver in its holster at one hip. A Campeachy
hat shaded his face and shoulders, and a pair of Mexican spurs tinkled
their little steel bells against their huge five-spiked rowels on his
heels. He scarcely sat in the saddle-tree--from hat to spurs you might
have drawn a perpendicular line. It would have taken in shoulders,
thighs, and all.

"Adjieu," said the young centaur; and Sosthene replied from the
creaking caleche, "Adjieu, 'Thanase," while the rider bestowed his
rustic smile upon the group. Madame Sosthene's eyes met his, and her
lips moved in an inaudible greeting; but the eyes of her little
daughter were in her lap. Bonaventure's gaze was hostile. A word or
two passed between uncle and nephew, including a remark and admission
that the cattle-thieves were getting worse than ever; and with a touch
of the spur, the young horseman galloped on.

It seems enough to admit that Zosephine's further remarks were silly
without reporting them in full.

"Look at his back! What airs! If I had looked up I should have laughed
in his face!" etc. "Well," she concluded, after much such chirruping,
"there's one comfort--he doesn't care a cent for me. If I should d