arme
behind my sons. But I won't have you drawing some unpleasant business
with the Lepailleurs on us all. You know the position, they would
be delighted to give us trouble. So don't give them occasion for
complaining, leave their daughter alone."

"Oh! I take plenty of care," cried the young man, thus suddenly
confessing the truth. "Poor girl! She has already had her ears boxed
because somebody told her father that I had been met with her. He
answered that rather than give her to me he would throw her into the
river."

"Ah! you see," concluded Mathieu. "It is understood, is it not? I shall
rely on your good behavior."

Thereupon they went their way, scouring the fields as far as the road to
Mareuil. Coveys of young partridges, still weak on the wing, started up
both to the right and to the left. The shooting would be good. Then as
the father and the son turned homeward, slackening their pace, a long
spell of silence fell between them. They were both reflecting.

"I don't wish that there should be any misunderstanding between us,"
Mathieu suddenly resumed; "you must not imagine that I shall prevent you
from marrying according to your tastes and that I shall require you to
take an heiress. Our poor Blaise married a portionless girl. And it
was the same with Denis; besides which I gave your sister, Claire, in
marriage to Frederic, who was simply one of our farm hands. So I don't
look down on Therese. On the contrary, I think her charming. She's one
of the prettiest girls of the district--not tall, certainly, but so
alert and determined, with her little pink face shining under such a
wild crop of fair hair, that one might think her powdered with all the
flour in the mill."

"Yes, isn't that so, father?" interrupted Gregoire enthusiastically.
"And if you only knew how affectionate and courageous she is! She's
worth a man any day. It's wrong of them to smack her, for she will never
put up with it. Whenever she sets her mind on anything she's bound to do
it, and it isn't I who can prevent her."

Absorbed in some reflections of his own, Mathieu scarcely heard his son.

"No, no," he resumed; "I certainly don't look down on their mill. If it
were not for Lepailleur's stupid obstinacy he would be drawing a fortune
from that mill nowadays. Since corn-growing has again been taken up all
over the district, thanks to our victory, he might have got a good pile
of crowns together if he had simply changed the old mechanism of hi