ot bear even to look at
coffee caramels for a very long time. They sat some time over the
refreshments provided for them, and their donkey was stabled at the inn
to await their return in the evening. Then bidding a temporary adieu
to their hostess, they went on to the town by train.

Mademoiselle Loire went at once to get her rent, which, she explained,
always took her some time, "for the people were not good at paying,"
and left the girls to look at the church, which was a very old one.
After they were joined by mademoiselle they strolled along to Marie's
relations. The husband was a seller of cider, which, Marie explained
to Barbara, was quite a different occupation from keeping an inn, and
much more respectable. Both he and his wife were very hospitable and
kind, and especially attentive to the "English miss."

It was quite a unique experience for her, for they dined behind a
trellis-work at one end of the shop, and, during the whole of dinner,
either the father or daughter was kept jumping up to serve the
customers with cider. The son was present too, but no one would allow
him to rise to serve anybody, for he was at college in Paris, and had
taken one of the first prizes in France for literature. It was quite
touching to see how proud his parents and sister were of him, and he
seemed to Barbara to be wonderfully unspoiled, considering the
attention he received.

It seemed her fate to have strange food offered her that day, and when
the first dish that appeared proved to be stewed eels, Barbara began to
dread what the rest of the menu might reveal. Fortunately, there was
nothing worse than beans boiled in cream, though it was with some
relief that she saw the long meal draw to a close. Coffee and
sweetmeats were served in a room upstairs, in which all the young man's
prizes were kept, and which were displayed with most loving pride and
reverence by the mother and sister, while the owner of them looked on
rather bashfully from a corner.

The young man was one of the type of Frenchmen who wear their hair cut
and brushed the wrong way, like a clothes-brush. Barbara was beginning
to divide all Frenchmen into two classes according to their _frisure_:
those that wore their hair brush-fashion, and those that had it long
and oiled--sometimes curled. These latter sometimes allowed it to fall
in locks upon their foreheads, tossing it back every now and then with
an abstracted air and easy grace that fascinated B