now, bid me good-by, and run back quickly to the house,
unless you wish them to have supper without you."

"Are you not going to take me, then?" cried the little boy, beginning to
rub his eyes to show that he was thinking of tears.

"You know very well that grandpapa and grand-mama do not wish it," said
Germain, fortifying himself behind the authority of his elders, like a
man who distrusts his own.

The child would not listen. He began to cry with all his might, saying
that as long as his father was taking little Marie, he might just as
well take him too. They replied that they must pass through great woods
filled with wicked beasts who eat up little children. The gray would not
carry three people; she had said so when they were starting, and in the
country where they were going there was no bed and no supper for little
boys. All these good reasons could not persuade Petit-Pierre; he threw
himself on the ground, and rolled about, shrieking that his little
father did not love him any more, and that if he did not take him he
would never go back to the house at all, day or night.

Germain had a father's heart, as soft and weak as a woman's. His-wife's
death, and the care which he had been obliged to bestow all alone on his
little ones, as well as the thought that these poor motherless children
needed a great deal of love, combined to make him thus. So such a sharp
struggle went on within him, all the more because he was ashamed of his
weakness and tried to hide his confusion from little Marie, that the
sweat started out on his forehead, and his eyes grew red and almost
ready to weep. At last he tried to get angry, but as he turned toward
little Marie in order to let her witness his strength of mind, he saw
that the good girls face was wet with tears; all his courage forsook him
and he could not keep back his own, scold and threaten as he would.

"Truly your heart is too hard," said little Marie at last, "and for
myself I know that I never could refuse a child who felt so badly. Come,
Germain, let 's take him. Your mare is well used to carrying two people
and a child, for you know that your brother-in-law and his wife, who is
much heavier than I, go to market every Saturday with their boy on this
good beast's back. Take him on the horse in front of you. Besides, I
should rather walk on foot all alone than give this little boy so much
pain."

"Never mind," answered Germain, who was dying to allow himself to give
way.