ss.

The ambitious child--a girl of fourteen--at this moment came down
stairs, and a more forbidding young damsel we had seldom seen. Her
mother had evidently no control over her; she was mistress of the
situation; ordered her mother about, slapped a younger brother, a little
fellow who was playing at a table with some leaden soldiers, and
finally, to our relief, disappeared into an inner room. We saw her no
more.

"It is always like that," sighed the poor mother, who seemed by no means
a woman to be lightly sat upon: "always like that ever since she went
that _malheureux_ voyage to Paris. It has changed her character; made
her dissatisfied with her lot; I fear she will one day leave us and go
back to Paris for good--or rather for evil; for she will have no one to
look after her; and, I am told, it is a sink of iniquity. I was never
there, and know very little about the ways of large towns. Morlaix is
quite enough for me. But she is afraid of her father, that is one
_bonheur_."

All this time she had been brewing us coffee, and now she brought it to
us in her best china, with some of the spirit of the country which does
duty for cognac and robs so many of the Bretons of their health and
senses. But it was not a time to be fastidious. To counteract the
effects of the elements and drenched clothes, we helped ourselves
liberally to a decoction that we thought excellent, but under other
conditions should have considered poisonous.

The while our hostess, glad of an appreciative audience, poured into our
ears tales and stories of herself, her life and the neighbourhood. How
she had originally belonged to the Morbihan, and when a girl dressed in
the costume of her country, with the short petticoats and the
picturesque kerchief crossed upon the breast. How her father had been a
well-to-do _bazvalan_ and made the Sunday clothes for the whole village.
And how she had met her fate when her bonhomme came that way on a visit
to an old uncle in the village, and in six months they were married, and
she had come to Morlaix. She had never regretted her marriage. She had a
good husband, who worked hard; and if they were poor, they were far from
being in want. She had really only one trouble in the world, and that
was that she could do nothing with her eldest girl. She would obey no
one but her father; and even he was losing control over her.

"Is her father much away?" we asked, thinking that the young damsel
looked as if she were