ck, down-falling plaits, meek, drooping eyes,
long lashes, soft childish cheeks and full throat, was Sidonie Le
Blanc. Bonaventure murmured:--

"Best scholah in the school, yet the _only_--that loves not her
teacher. But I give always my interest, not according to the
interestingness, but rather to the necessitude, of each."

The visit was not long. Standing, about to depart, the visitor seemed
still, as at the first, a man of many reservations under his polite
smiles. But just then he dropped a phrase that the teacher recognized
as an indirect quotation, and Bonaventure cried, with greedy eyes:--

"You have read Victor Hugo?"

"Yes."

"Oh, sir, that grea-a-at man! That father of libbutty! Other patriots
are the sons, but he the father! Is it not thus?"

The priest shrugged and made a mouth. The young schoolmaster's face
dropped.

"Sir, I must ask you--is he not the frien' of the poor and downtrod?"

The visitor's smile quite disappeared. He said:--

"Oh!"--and waved a hand impatiently; "Victor Hugo"--another
mouth--"Victor Hugo"--replying in French to the schoolmaster's
English--"is not of my party." And then he laughed unpleasantly and
said good-day.

The State Superintendent did not come, but every day--"It is perhaps
he shall come to-mo'w, chil'run; have yo' lessons well!"

The whole tiny army of long, blue, ankle-hiding cottonade pantalettes
and pantaloons tried to fulfil the injunction. Not one but had a warm
place in the teacher's heart. But Toutou, Claude, Sidonie, anybody who
glanced into that heart could see sitting there enthroned. And some
did that kind of reconnoitring. Catou, 'Mian's older brother, was much
concerned. He saw no harm in a little education, but took no
satisfaction in the introduction of English speech; and speaking to
'Mian of that reminded him to say he believed the schoolmaster
himself was aware of the three children's pre-eminence in his heart.
But 'Mian only said:--

"_Ah bien, c'est_ all right, _alors_!" (Well, then, it's all right.)
Whether all right or not, Bonaventure was aware of it, and tried to
hide it under special kindnesses to others, and particularly to the
dullard of the school, grandson of Catou and nicknamed _Crebiche_[4].
The child loved him; and when Claude rang the chapel bell, and before
its last tap had thrilled dreamily on the morning air, when the
urchins playing about the schoolhouse espied another group coming
slowly across the common with Bonavent