another moment, and the child
came slipping out: not with flying steps, as a city child would come,
to whom wandering musicians were a thing of every day; but shyly, with
sidelong movements, clinging to the wall as it advanced, and only
daring by stealth to lift its eyes to the strange woman with the
fiddle, a sight never seen before in its little life. But Marie knew
all about the things that children think. What was she but a child
herself? she had little knowledge of grown persons, and regarded them
all as ogres, more or less, except Old Billy, and La Patronne, who
really meant to be kind.

"Come, lit' girl!" she said in her clear soft voice. "Come and dance!
for you I play, for you I sing too, if you will. Ah, the pretty song,
'En revenant d'Auvergne!'" And she began to sing as she played:

"Eh, gai, Coco!
Eh, gai, Coco!
Eh, venez voir la danse
Du petit marmot!
Eh, venez voir la danse
Du petit marmot!"

The little girl pressed closer against the wall, her eyes wide open,
her finger in her mouth, yet came nearer and nearer, drawn by the smile
as well as the music. Presently another came running up, and another;
then the boys, who had just brought their cows home and were playing
marbles on the sly, behind the brown barn, heard the sound of the
fiddle and came running, stuffing their gains into their pockets as
they ran. Then Mrs. Piper, who was always foolish about music, her
neighbors said, came to her door, and Mrs. Post opposite, who was as
deaf as her namesake, came to see what Susan Piper was after, loitering
round the door when the men-folks were coming in to their supper: and
so with one thing and another, Marie had quite a little crowd around
her, and was feeling happy and pleased, and sure that when she stopped
playing and carried round her handkerchief knotted at the four corners
so as to form a bag, the pennies would drop into it as fast, yes, and
maybe a good deal faster, than if Le Boss's ugly daughter was carrying
it, with her nose turned up and one eye looking round the corner to see
where her hair was gone to. Ah, Le Boss, what was he doing this
evening for his music, with no Marie and no Lady!

And it was just at this triumphant moment that Jacques De Arthenay came
round the corner and into the village street.

CHAPTER II.

"D'ARTHENAY, TENEZ FOI!"

There had been De Arthenays in the village ever since it became a
village: never many of them, one or two at most