am afraid that I am in the family-way."

The Princess stretched out her arms to embrace her, and the Baroness
said, pointing to the Baron, who was dumb with astonishment, and was
trying to get at the truth:

"You do not recognize Raymond? He has certainly changed a good deal, and
he agreed to come with me so that I might not travel alone. We take
little trips like this, occasionally, like good friends who cannot live
together. We are going to separate here; he has had enough of me
already."

She put out her hand, which he took mechanically, and then she jumped
out on to the platform among her friends, who were waiting for her.

The Baron hastily shut the carriage-door, for he was too much disturbed
to say a word or come to any determination. He heard his wife's voice,
and their merry laughter as they went away.

He never saw her again, nor did he ever discover whether she had told
him a lie or was speaking the truth.

THE LITTLE CASK

Jules Chicot, the innkeeper, who lived at Epreville, pulled up his
tilbury in front of Mother Magloire's farmhouse. He was a tall man of
about forty, with a red face and a round stomach, and was generally said
to be _a very knowing customer_.

He hitched his horse up to the gatepost and went in. He owned some land
adjoining that of the old woman's, which he had been coveting for a long
while, and had tried in vain to buy a score of times, but she had always
obstinately refused to part with it.

"I was born here, and here I mean to die," was all she said.

He found her peeling potatoes outside the farmhouse door. She was a
woman of about seventy-two, very thin, shriveled and wrinkled, almost
dried up in fact, and much bent, but as active and untiring as a girl.
Chicot patted her on the back in a very friendly fashion, and then sat
down by her on a stool.

"Well, Mother, you are always pretty well and hearty, I am glad to see."

"Nothing to complain of, considering, thank you. And how are you, Mons.
Chicot?"

"Oh! pretty well, thank you, except a few rheumatic pains occasionally;
otherwise, I should have nothing to complain of."

"That's all the better!"

And she said no more, while Chicot watched her going on with her work.
Her crooked, knotty fingers, hard as a lobster's claws, seized the
tubers, which were lying in a pail, as if they had been a pair of
pincers, and she peeled them rapidly, cutting off long strips of skin
with an old knife which she held in the o