g her bit like the proud,
high-spirited mare she was. As they rode by the long pasture, she spied
her mother--who was called Old Grise, as she was called Young Grise--and
neighed an adieu. Old Grise approached the fence, making her hopples
ring, tried to leap over into the road to follow her daughter; then,
seeing that she started off at a fast trot, she neighed in her turn, and
stood looking after her, pensive and disturbed in mind, with her nose in
the air, and her mouth filled with grass which she forgot to eat.

"The poor creature still knows her progeny," said Germain to divert
little Marie's thoughts from her grief. "That makes me think that I
didn't kiss my Petit-Pierre before I started. The bad boy wasn't there.
Last night, he strove to make me promise to take him along, and he
cried a good hour in his bed. This morning again he tried everything to
persuade me. Oh! what a shrewd, wheedling little rascal he is! but when
he saw that it couldn't be, monsieur lost his temper: he went off into
the fields, and I haven't seen him all day."

"I saw him," said Marie, trying to force back her tears. "He was running
toward the woods with the Soulas children, and I thought it likely he
had been away for some time, for he was hungry, and was eating wild
plums and blackberries off the bushes. I gave him some bread from my
luncheon, and he said: 'Thanks, my dear little Marie; when you come to
our house, I'll give you some cake.' The little fellow is just too
winning, Germain!"

"Yes, he is a winning child, and I don't know what I wouldn't do for
him," the ploughman replied. "If his grandmother hadn't had more sense
than I, I couldn't have kept from taking him with me when I saw him
crying so hard that his poor little heart was all swollen."

"Well! why didn't you bring him, Germain? he wouldn't have been in the
way; he's so good when you do what he wants you to."

"It seems that he would have been in the way where I am going. At
least, that was Pere Maurice's opinion.--For my part, I should have
said, on the contrary, that we ought to see how he would be received,
and that nobody could help taking kindly to such a dear child.--But they
say at the house that I mustn't begin by exhibiting the burdens of the
household.--I don't know why I talk to you about this, little Marie: you
don't understand it."

"Yes, I do, Germain; I know you are going to get a wife; my mother told
me, and bade me not mention it to any one, either a