ced most of all the girls--there was
my old friend Didier who wanted every dance, and glad enough I would have
been to dance with him--so tall and straight he was--but for some new
friends I made that day. They were the cousins of my brother's young
wife--two of them from Chalet, one a maid in a family from Paris, and
with them there came a young man who was a servant in the same family.
They were pleasant, good-natured girls, and for the young man, there was
no harm in him; but their talk quite turned my silly head. They talked of
Chalet and how grandly the ladies there were dressed, and still more of
Paris--the two who knew it--till I felt quite ashamed of being only a
country girl, and the fete-day costume I had put on in the morning so
proudly, I wished I could tear off and dress like my new friends. And
when Didier came again to ask me to dance, I pushed him away and told him
he tired me asking me so often. Poor Didier! I remember so well how he
looked--as if he could not understand me--like our great sheep-dog, that
would stare up with his soft sad eyes if ever I spoke roughly to him!

"That day was the beginning of much trouble for me. I got in the way of
going to Chalet whenever I could get leave, to see my new friends, who
were always full of some plan to amuse themselves and me, and my home
where I had been so happy I seemed no longer to care for. I must have
grieved them all, but I thought not of it--my head was quite turned.

"One day I was setting off for Chalet to spend the afternoon, when, just
as I was leaving, the bon papa stopped me.

"'Here, my child,' he said, holding out to me an apple; 'this is the
first of this season's on thy pommier. I gathered it this morning--see,
it is quite ripe--it was on the sunny side. Take it; thou mayest,
perhaps, feel tired on the way.'

"I took it carelessly.

"'Thanks, bon papa,' I said, as I put it in my pocket. Bon papa looked at
me sadly.

"'It is never now as it used to be,' he said. 'My little girl has never
a moment now to spare for the poor old man. And she would even wish to
leave him for ever; for thou knowest well, my child, I could not live
with the thought of thee so far away. When my little girl returned she
would find no old grandfather, he would be lying in the cold church-yard.'

"The poor old man held out his arms to me, but I turned away. I saw that
his eyes were filled with tears--he was growing so feeble now--and I saw,
too, that my mother,