may leave Madame 'Thanase a widow, and you step into his big shoes.
They would not fit. Do not go. That thing is not going to happen; and
the way to get rid of the troublesome notion is to stay and see
yourself outgrow it--and her."

Bonaventure shook his head mournfully, but staid. From time to time
Madame 'Thanase passed before his view in pursuit of her outdoor and
indoor cares. But even when he came under her galerie roof he could
see that she never doubted she had made the very best choice in all
Carancro.

And yet people knew--she knew--that Bonaventure not only enjoyed the
acquaintance, but sometimes actually went from one place to another on
the business, of the great ex-governor. Small matters they may have
been, but, anyhow, just think!

Sometimes as he so went or came he saw her squatting on a board at the
edge of a _coolee_, her petticoat wrapped snugly around her limbs, and
a limp sunbonnet hiding her nut-brown face, pounding her washing with
a wooden paddle. She was her own housekeeper, chambermaid, cook,
washerwoman, gooseherd, seamstress, nurse, and all the rest. Her
floors, they said, were always _bien fourbis_ (well scrubbed); her
beds were high, soft, snug, and covered with the white mesh of her own
crochet-needle.

He saw her the oftener because she worked much out on her low veranda.
From that place she had a broad outlook upon the world, with 'Thanase
in the foreground, at his toil, sometimes at his sport. His cares as a
herder, _vacheur_,--_vache_, he called it,--were wherever his
slender-horned herds might roam or his stallions lead their mares in
search of the sweetest herbage; and when rains filled the _maraises_,
and the cold nor'westers blew from Texas and the sod was spongy with
much water, and he went out for feathered game, the numberless
mallards, black ducks, gray ducks, teal--with sometimes the
canvas-back--and the _poules-d'eau_--the water-hens and the rails, and
the _cache-cache_--the snipe--were as likely to settle or rise just
before his own house as elsewhere, and the most devastating shot that
hurtled through those feathered multitudes was that sent by her
husband--hers--her own--possessive case--belonging to her. She was
proud of her property.

Sometimes _la vieille_--for she was _la vieille_ from the very day
that she counted her wedding presents, mostly chickens, and turned
them loose in the dooryard--sometimes she enjoyed the fine excitement
of seeing her _vieux_ catc