efect which would soon be remedied. George kneeled by the bedside and
kissed the hand of his wife, and went out of the room feeling as if he
had escaped from a tomb.

All went well, and after a couple of weeks Henriette was about the house
again, laughing all day and singing with joy. But the baby did not gain
quite as rapidly as the doctor had hoped, and it was decided that the
country air would be better for her. So George and his mother paid a
visit to the farm in the country, and arranged that the country woman
should put her own child to nurse elsewhere and should become the
foster-mother of little Gervaise.

George paid a good price for the service, far more than would have been
necessary, for the simple country woman was delighted with the idea of
taking care of the grandchild of the deputy of her district. George came
home and told his wife about this and had a merry time as he pictured
the woman boasting about it to the travelers who stopped at her door.
"Yes, ma'am, a great piece of luck I've got, ma'am. I've got the
daughter of the daughter of our deputy--at your service ma'am. My!
But she is as fat as out little calf--and so clever! She understands
everything. A great piece of luck for me, ma'am. She's the daughter
of the daughter of our deputy!" Henriette was vastly entertained,
discovering in her husband a new talent, that of an actor.

As for George's mother, she was hardly to be persuaded from staying in
the country with the child. She went twice a week, to make sure that all
went well. Henriette and she lived with the child's picture before them;
they spent their time sewing on caps and underwear--all covered with
laces and frills and pink and blue ribbons. Every day, when George
came home from his work, he found some new article completed, and was
ravished by the scent of some new kind of sachet powder. What a lucky
man he was!

You would think he must have been the happiest man in the whole city
of Paris. But George, alas, had to pay the penalty for his early sins.
There was, for instance, the deception he had practiced upon his friend,
away back in the early days. Now he had friends of his own, and he could
not keep these friends from visiting him; and so he was unquiet with the
fear that some one of them might play upon him the same vile trick. Even
in the midst of his radiant happiness, when he knew that Henriette was
hanging upon his every word, trembling with delight when she heard his
latchk