ence.

He had his hands on his hips and was quietly chuckling at the scene
before him, as one who, although old, sympathized with the natural and
harmless sportiveness of young people and would as lief as not join in
a prank or two.

"You see what I'm doing, Father Beret," said Alice, "I am preventing a
great damage to you. You will maybe lose a good many cherry pies and
dumplings if I let Jean go. He was climbing the tree to pilfer the
fruit; so I pulled him down, you understand."

"Ta, ta!" exclaimed the good man, shaking his gray head; "we must
reason with the child. Let go his leg, daughter, I will vouch for him;
eh, Jean?"

Alice released the hunchback, then laughed gayly and tossed the cluster
of cherries into his hand, whereupon he began munching them voraciously
and talking at the same time.

"I knew I could get them," he boasted; "and see, I have them now." He
hopped around, looking like a species of ill-formed monkey.

Pere Beret came and leaned on the low fence close to Alice. She was
almost as tall as he.

"The sun scorches to-day," he said, beginning to mop his furrowed face
with a red-flowered cotton handkerchief; "and from the look of the sky
yonder," pointing southward, "it is going to bring on a storm. How is
Madame Roussillon to-day?"

"She is complaining as she usually does when she feels extremely well,"
said Alice; "that's why I had to take her place at the oven and bake
pies. I got hot and came out to catch a bit of this breeze. Oh, but you
needn't smile and look greedy, Pere Beret, the pies are not for your
teeth!"

"My daughter, I am not a glutton, I hope; I had meat not two hours
since--some broiled young squirrels with cress, sent me by Rene de
Ronville. He never forgets his old father."

"Oh, I never forget you either, mon pere; I thought of you to-day every
time I spread a crust and filled it with cherries; and when I took out
a pie all brown and hot, the red juice bubbling out of it so good
smelling and tempting, do you know what I said to myself?"

"How could I know, my child?"

"Well, I thought this: 'Not a single bite of that pie does Father Beret
get.'"

"Why so, daughter?"

"Because you said it was bad of me to read novels and told Mother
Roussillon to hide them from me. I've had any amount of trouble about
it."

"Ta, ta! read the good books that I gave you. They will soon kill the
taste for these silly romances."

"I tried," said Alice; "I tried very hard, and it