he smilingly explained to Susette: "It's my
old friend, Joseph, the carter. He'd bring his work to me if he had
to travel five leagues." And he was for jumping up and running to
the door.

"Wait," cried Susette. "I'll have to go with you, and I can't be seen
like this."

"That's right," said Gaspard. "That confounded chain! I'd forgotten all
about it." So he called out again to his friend, and the two of them
held quite a conversation while Susette tried to make herself
presentable. But Gaspard turned to her as she shook her hair out for the
third time, starting to rearrange it. "Quick!" he urged. "He's in a
hurry. One of his horses has cast a shoe."

"You can't show yourself like that, either," cried Susette, playing for
time.

"Me?" laughed Gaspard. "I'm a smith. I'd like to see a smith who
couldn't show himself in singlet and apron!"

"You look like a brigand."

But he merely laughed: "Joseph won't mind."

And, indeed, Joseph the carter did appear to have but little thought for
anything except the work in hand. For that matter, neither, apparently,
did Gaspard. After the first few brief civilities and the inevitable
jests about the chain, their attention was absorbed at once by the
horses. There were four of these--Percherons, huge monsters with shaggy
fetlocks and massive feet; yet Joseph and Gaspard went about lifting
these colossal hoofs, and considering them as tenderly as if the two had
been young mothers concerned with the feet of babes.

At last Susette let out a little cry, and both men turned to look at
her.

"I faint," she said weakly.

And Gaspard sprang over and caught her in his arms. He was filled with
pity. He was all gentleness.

"Are you sick?" he asked.

"It was the odor of the horses," Susette replied in her small voice.

Joseph the carter seemed to take this as some aspersion on himself.
"Those horses don't smell," he asserted stoutly.

But Gaspard signaled him to hold his place. "You'll be all right in a
second or so," he told his wife. He spoke gently; although, as a matter
of fact, he himself could find nothing about those magnificent animals
to offend the most delicate sensibility. "You'll be all right. You can
come into the forge and sit down while I shoe the big gray."

"That will be worse than ever," wailed Susette.

Joseph the carter was an outspoken man, gruff and honest.

"And there's a woman for you," he said, "to be not only wed but welded
to a smith! _Nom d'un