nd winter, in her glass cage, Madame Bayard,
with her pale brown face and her plaited hair, had smitten the hearts of
all the young clerks of the quarter Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie.

And yet for a long time there had been a disappointment in that happy
household, a cloud in that bright sky. An heir was wanted, and it was
five years before little Leon came into the world. One can imagine with
what joy he was received. Now one day they might write over the door of
_The Silver Pill_ these words, "Bayard & Son." But as the infant arrived
at the time of a boom in isinglass, Madame Bayard, whose presence in the
shop was indispensable, could not think of nursing him. She even gave up
the idea of taking a nurse in the house, fearing for the new-born the
close air of that corner of old Paris, and contented herself with taking
every Sunday with her husband a little excursion to Argenteuil to see
her son with his nurse Voisin, who was overwhelmed with coffee, sugar,
soap, and other dainties. At the end of eighteen months Mother Voisin
brought back the baby in a magnificent state, and for two years a
child's nurse, chosen with great care, had taken the child out for his
airings in the square of the Tour Saint-Jacques, and had exhibited for
the admiration of her companion-nurses, the pouting lips, the high
color, and the dimpled back of the future druggist.

And now these good Bayards, learning of the death of Mother Voisin,
could not bear the thought that the little girl who had been nourished
at the same breast with their boy should be abandoned to public charity,
so they went to Argenteuil for Norine.

Poor little one! Since the fifteen days that her mother slept in the
cemetery she had been taken charge of by a cousin who kept a
billiard-saloon; and though she was not yet five years old, she had been
put to work washing the beer-glasses.

[Illustration]

The Bayards found her charming, with great eyes as blue as the summer
sun, and her thick blond tresses escaping from her ugly black bonnet.
Leon, who had been brought with his nurse, embraced his foster sister;
and the cousin, who that very morning had boxed the orphan's ears for
negligence in sweeping out the hall, appeared before the Parisians to be
as much touched as if parting with Norine was a heart-breaking affair.

The order for an ample breakfast restored his serenity.

It was a beautiful Sunday in June, and they were in the country--"an
occasion which should