t; which incapacity for humour probably accounted for
Jean's occasional lapses from domestic grace. If Jean had said that he
had met a periwinkle dancing a hornpipe with an oyster she would have
muttered heavily "Think of that!" The most she could say to any one
was: "I believe you, ma couzaine." Some time in her life her voice had
dropped into that great well she called her body, and it came up only
now and then like an echo. There never was anything quite so fat as she.
She was found weeping one day on the veille because she was no longer
able to get her shoulders out of the window to use the clothes-lines
stretching to her neighbour's over the way. If she sat down in your
presence, it was impossible to do aught but speculate as to whether she
could get up alone. Yet she went abroad on the water a great deal with
Jean. At first the neighbours gave out sinister suspicions as to Jean's
intentions, for sea-going with your own wife was uncommon among the
sailors of the coast. But at last these dark suggestions settled down
into a belief that Jean took her chiefly for ballast; and thereafter she
was familiarly called "Femme de Ballast."

Talking was no virtue in her eyes. What was going on in her mind no one
ever knew. She was more phlegmatic than an Indian; but the tails of the
sheep on the Town Hill did not better show the quarter of the wind than
the changing colour of Aimable's face indicated Jean's coming or going.
For Mattresse Aimable had one eternal secret, an unwavering passion for
Jean Touzel. If he patted her on the back on a day when the fishing was
extra fine, her heart pumped so hard she had to sit down; if, passing
her lonely bed of a morning, he shook her great toe to wake her, she
blushed, and turned her face to the wall in placid happiness. She was so
credulous and matter-of-fact that if Jean had told her she must die on
the spot, she would have said "Think of that!" or "Je te crais," and
died. If in the vague dusk of her brain the thought glimmered that she
was ballast for Jean on sea and anchor on land, she still was content.
For twenty years the massive, straight-limbed Jean had stood to her for
all things since the heavens and the earth were created. Once, when she
had burnt her hand in cooking supper for him, his arm made a trial of
her girth, and he kissed her. The kiss was nearer her ear than her lips,
but to her mind it was the most solemn proof of her connubial happiness
and of Jean's devotion. Sh