ountry-side
there was not any lad truer, gentler, braver, or more patient at labour
than was Bernadou; and though some thought him mild even to foolishness,
and meek even to stupidity, he was no fool; and he had a certain rough
skill at music, and a rare gift at the culture of plants, and made his
little home bright within the winter-time with melody, and in the summer
gay without as a king's parterre.

At any rate, Reine Allix and he had been happy together for a quarter
of a century under the old gray thatch of the wayside cottage, where it
stood at the foot of the village street, with its great sycamores spread
above it. Nor were they less happy when in mid-April, in the six
and twentieth year of his age, Bernadou had come in with a bunch of
primroses in his hand, and had bent down to her and saluted her with a
respectful tenderness, and said softly and a little shyly, "_Gran'mere_,
would it suit you if I were ever--to marry?"

Reine Allix was silent a minute and more, cherishing the primroses and
placing them in a little brown cupful of water. Then she looked at him
steadily with her clear, dark eyes. "Who is it, my child?" He was always
a child to her, this last-born of the numerous brood that had once dwelt
with her under the spreading branches of the sycamores, and had now all
perished off the face of the earth, leaving himself and her alone.

Bernadou's eyes met hers frankly. "It is Margot Dal. Does that please
you, _gran'mere_, or no?"

"It pleases me well," she said, simply. But there was a little quiver
about her firm-set mouth, and her aged head was bent over the primroses.
She had foreseen it; she was glad of it; and yet for the instant it was
a pang to her.

"I am very thankful," said Bernadou, with a flash of joy on his face. He
was independent of his grandmother; he could make enough to marry upon
by his daily toil, and he had a little store of gold and silver in his
bank in the thatch, put by for a rainy day; but he would have no more
thought of going against her will than he would have thought of lifting
his hand against her. In the primitive homesteads of the Berceau de
Dieu filial reverence was still accounted the first of virtues, yet the
simplest and the most imperative.

"I will go see Margot this evening," said Reine Allix, after a little
pause. "She is a good girl and a brave, and of pure heart and fair name.
You have chosen well, my grandson."

Bernadou stooped his tall, fair, curly hea