hat I wouldn't wear out in a thousand years. _La bonne idee!_'

'Why don't you get some work that pays better?' repeated Hortense.

The man dipped his oars again.

'Work that pays better? I must work for work. I must earn that too. Work
is wages. I count the promise of the next week's employment the best
part of my Saturday night's pocketings. Fifty casks rolled from the ship
to the storehouse mean two things: thirty sous and fifty more to roll
the next day. Just so a crushed hand, or a dislocated shoulder, mean
twenty francs to the apothecary and _bon jour_ to my business.'

'Are you married?' asked Hortense.

'No, I thank you. I'm not cursed with that blessing. But I've an old
mother, a sister, and three nephews, who look to me for support. The old
woman's too old to work; the lass is too lazy, and the little ones are
too young. But they're none of them too old or young to be hungry,
_allez_. I'll be hanged if I'm not a father to them all.'

There was a pause. The man had resumed rowing. Madame Bernier sat
motionless, still examining her neighbor's physiognomy. The sinking sun,
striking full upon his face, covered it with an almost lurid glare. Her
own features being darkened against the western sky, the direction of
them was quite indistinguishable to her companion.

'Why don't you leave the place?' she said at last.

'Leave it! how?' he replied, looking up with the rough avidity with
which people of his class receive proposals touching their interests,
extending to the most philanthropic suggestions that mistrustful
eagerness with which experience has taught them to defend their own side
of a bargain--the only form of proposal that she has made them
acquainted with.

'Go somewhere else,' said Hortense.

'Where, for instance!'

'To some new country--America.'

The man burst into a loud laugh. Madame Bernier's face bore more
evidence of interest in the play of his features than of that
discomfiture which generally accompanies the consciousness of ridicule.

'There's a lady's scheme for you! If you'll write for furnished
apartments, _la-bas_, I don't desire anything better. But no leaps in
the dark for me. America and Algeria are very fine words to cram into an
empty stomach when you're lounging in the sun, out of work, just as you
stuff tobacco into your pipe and let the smoke curl around your head.
But they fade away before a cutlet and a bottle of wine. When the earth
grows so smooth and the air so pu