ing a
knave, a man of twenty-eight isn't too old? I'd like to know if Bastien,
or any other pretty boy who has the advantage of being ten years younger
than I am, wouldn't have been crushed by _that man_, as Petit-Pierre
calls him: what do you think about it?"

"I think, Germain, that you have done me a very great service, and that
I shall thank you for it all my life."

"Is that all?"

"My little father," said the child, "I didn't think to tell little Marie
what I promised you. I didn't have time, but I'll tell her at home, and
I'll tell grandma, too."

This promise on his child's part gave Germain abundant food for
reflection. The problem now was how to explain his position to his
family, and while setting forth his grievances against the widow Guerin,
to avoid telling them what other thoughts had predisposed him to be so
keen-sighted and so harsh in his judgment.

When one is happy and proud, the courage to make others accept one's
happiness seems easily within reach; but to be rebuffed in one direction
and blamed in another is not a very pleasant plight.

Luckily, Pierre was asleep when they reached the farm, and Germain put
him down on his bed without waking him. Then he entered upon such
explanations as he was able to give. Pere Maurice, sitting upon his
three-legged stool in the doorway, listened gravely to him, and,
although he was ill pleased with the result of the expedition, when
Germain, after describing the widow's system of coquetry, asked his
father in-law if he had time to go and pay court to her fifty-two
Sundays in the year with the chance of being dismissed at the end of the
year, the old man replied, nodding his head in token of assent: "You are
not wrong, Germain; that couldn't be." And again, when Germain told how
he had been compelled to bring little Marie home again without loss of
time to save her from the insults, perhaps from the violence, of an
unworthy master, Pere Maurice again nodded assent, saying: "You are not
wrong, Germain; that's as it should be."

When Germain had finished his story and given all his reasons, his
father-in-law and mother-in-law simultaneously uttered a heavy sigh of
resignation as they exchanged glances.

Then the head of the family rose, saying: "Well! God's will be done!
affection isn't made to order!"

"Come to supper, Germain," said the mother-in-law. "It's a pity that
couldn't be arranged better; however, it wasn't God's will, it seems. We
must look