heir mother would say; and they would scamper off.

Paul would go to the old barn, catch birds, throw stones into the pond,
or pound the trunks of the trees with a stick till they resounded like
drums. Virginia would feed the rabbits and run to pick the wild flowers
in the fields, and her flying legs would disclose her little embroidered
pantalettes. One autumn evening, they struck out for home through the
meadows. The new moon illumined part of the sky and a mist hovered like
a veil over the sinuosities of the river. Oxen, lying in the pastures,
gazed mildly at the passing persons. In the third field, however,
several of them got up and surrounded them. "Don't be afraid," cried
Felicite; and murmuring a sort of lament she passed her hand over the
back of the nearest ox; he turned away and the others followed. But when
they came to the next pasture, they heard frightful bellowing.

It was a bull which was hidden from them by the fog. He advanced towards
the two women, and Madame Aubain prepared to flee for her life. "No,
no! not so fast," warned Felicite. Still they hurried on, for they could
hear the noisy breathing of the bull behind them. His hoofs pounded the
grass like hammers, and presently he began to gallop! Felicite turned
around and threw patches of grass in his eyes. He hung his head, shook
his horns and bellowed with fury. Madame Aubain and the children,
huddled at the end of the field, were trying to jump over the ditch.
Felicite continued to back before the bull, blinding him with dirt,
while she shouted to them to make haste.

Madame Aubain finally slid into the ditch, after shoving first Virginia
and then Paul into it, and though she stumbled several times she
managed, by dint of courage, to climb the other side of it.

The bull had driven Felicite up against a fence; the foam from
his muzzle flew in her face and in another minute he would have
disembowelled her. She had just time to slip between two bars and the
huge animal, thwarted, paused.

For years, this occurrence was a topic of conversation in Pont-l'Eveque.
But Felicite took no credit to herself, and probably never knew that she
had been heroic.

Virginia occupied her thoughts solely, for the shock she had sustained
gave her a nervous affection, and the physician, M. Poupart, prescribed
the salt-water bathing at Trouville. In those days, Trouville was
not greatly patronised. Madame Aubain gathered information, consulted
Bourais, and made p