ach with a glass of cider at hand.

"_Mon pere--la voici_," announced Joyselle, with a kind of simple
pomposity eminently fitted to the occasion.

Old Joyselle finished his act of adding a domino to the long line before
him and then looked up. He was a rather small, bent old man, with
quantities of rough, curly grey hair and a petulant expression.

"Ugh!" he said rudely.

"Shake hands with him, Brigit," suggested Victor pulling his moustache
to suppress a smile. Brigit held out her hand.

"I am very glad to meet you," she said in French.

The old man stared. Then he smiled, showing one snow-white tooth. "_Tu
parles_," he murmured. Then he went back to his game.

The old woman, more polite, had risen, and was waiting her turn. She was
very tall and had a heavy moustache.

"They told me you were beautiful," she began courteously, whereupon the
old man interrupted, repeating her words but, by a change in emphasis,
casting derisive doubts on whoever "they" might be. "They _told_ me you
were _beautiful_."

Brigit burst out laughing, and leaning forward smiled at the speaker.

"Well--am I not beautiful?" she asked with an infectious chuckle of
sincere amusement.

But old Joyselle was a man of character, apparently, and not to be
beguiled.

"_Belle? Non, non. Pas ca. Mais_--Victor, _petit_, surely you can't be
going to marry a real lady?"

Joyselle flushed, and she knew his flush had to do only with his
father's lapse of memory, not his reference to her ladyhood.

"Not I, _mon pere_. I married Felicite, you know. It is our boy who is
going to marry this--ugly lady."

His father shook his head. "Not ugly, _mon fils_." he declared solemnly,
"not ugly. Only _plain_."

This time Brigit did not laugh. Something in the old man's half-vacant
face touched her. He was Victor's father; he had held, as a little baby,
the man she loved; he had worked for him and helped to make him what he
was. Laying her hand on his, she smiled down at him.

"You are quite right," she said gently, "only plain. Will you show me
how to play dominoes?"

"He can't," retorted Madame Joyselle, eagerly, "he has forgotten, and,
besides, he cheats."

Joyselle walked to the window, his shoulders shaking, and before the old
man could retort, Theo came into the room carrying a lacquered tin tray
with a jug of cider and some glasses on it.

"Ah, you have come? _Grand-pere, grand-mere_, what do you think of my
_fiancee_?"

But Brigit drew hi