n him."

"We will wait for him, my dear friend."

As they turned away, they saw a peasant woman coming toward the house,
carrying two tin pails, which appeared to be heavy and which glistened
brightly in the sunlight.

She limped with her right leg, and in her brown knitted jacket, that was
faded by the sun and washed out by the rain, she looked like a poor,
wretched, dirty servant.

"Here is mamma." the child said.

When she got close to the house, she looked at the strangers angrily and
suspiciously, and then she went in, as if she had not seen them. She
looked old and had a hard, yellow, wrinkled face, one of those wooden
faces that country people so often have.

Monsieur d'Apreval called her back.

"I beg your pardon, madame, but we came in to know whether you could sell
us two glasses of milk."

She was grumbling when she reappeared in the door, after putting down her
pails.

"I don't sell milk," she replied.

"We are very thirsty," he said, "and madame is very tired. Can we not get
something to drink?"

The peasant woman gave them an uneasy and cunning glance and then she made
up her mind.

"As you are here, I will give you some," she said, going into the house,
and almost immediately the child came out and brought two chairs, which
she placed under an apple tree, and then the mother, in turn brought out
two bowls of foaming milk, which she gave to the visitors. She did not
return to the house, however, but remained standing near them, as if to
watch them and to find out for what purpose they had come there.

"You have come from Fecamp?" she said.

"Yes," Monsieur d'Apreval replied, "we are staying at Fecamp for the
summer."

And then, after a short silence he continued:

"Have you any fowls you could sell us every week?"

The woman hesitated for a moment and then replied:

"Yes, I think I have. I suppose you want young ones?"

"Yes, of course."

"What do you pay for them in the market?"

D'Apreval, who had not the least idea, turned to his companion:

"What are you paying for poultry in Fecamp, my dear lady?"

"Four francs and four francs fifty centimes," she said, her eyes full of
tears, while the farmer's wife, who was looking at her askance, asked in
much surprise:

"Is the lady ill, as she is crying?"

He did not know what to say, and replied with some hesitation:

"No--no--but she lost her watch as we came along, a very handsome watch,
and that troubles her. If anybody shou