a good year can comfort me after this."

"It seems to me, father, that until now I have given you very little
trouble----"

"And paid mighty little rent," put in his parent.

"I came to ask you something else besides. Will you build a second floor
to your house, and some rooms above the shed?"

"Deuce a bit of it; I have not the cash, and that you know right well.
Besides, it would be money thrown clean away, for what would it bring
in? Oh! you get up early of a morning to come and ask me to build you a
place that would ruin a king, do you? Your name may be David, but I have
not got Solomon's treasury. Why, you are mad! or they changed my child
at nurse. There is one for you that will have grapes on it," he said,
interrupting himself to point out a shoot. "Offspring of this sort don't
disappoint their parents; you dung the vines, and they repay you for it.
I sent you to school; I spent any amount of money to make a scholar of
you; I sent you to the Didots to learn your business; and all this fancy
education ends in a daughter-in-law out of L'Houmeau without a penny to
her name. If you had not studied books, if I had kept you under my eye,
you would have done as I pleased, and you would be marrying a miller's
widow this day with a hundred thousand francs in hand, to say nothing
of the mill. Oh! your cleverness leads you to imagine that I am going
to reward this fine sentiment by building palaces for you, does it?...
Really, anybody might think that the house that has been a house these
two hundred years was nothing but a pigsty, not fit for the girl out
of L'Houmeau to sleep in! What next! She is the Queen of France, I
suppose."

"Very well, father, I will build the second floor myself; the son will
improve his father's property. It is not the usual way, but it happens
so sometimes."

"What, my lad! you can find money for building, can you, though you
can't find money to pay the rent, eh! You sly dog, to come round your
father."

The question thus raised was hard to lay, for the old man was only too
delighted to seize an opportunity of posing as a good father without
disbursing a penny; and all that David could obtain was his bare consent
to the marriage and free leave to do what he liked in the house--at his
own expense; the old "bear," that pattern of a thrifty parent, kindly
consenting not to demand the rent and drain the savings to which David
imprudently owned. David went back again in low spirits. He saw th