rning, her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows
displaying stout, stubby arms. The top button of her bodice was open;
she was bare-headed, but her hair, little deeper in shade than her
tanned face and neck, was coiled neatly. Had it not been for the hard
grip of the day before I should have jealously resented her admission
into our vagabond fraternity. As it was, from the height of my
sixteen-year-old masculinity I somewhat looked down upon her: not as
poor Blanquette, the zither-playing vagrant; but as a girl. Could we,
creation's lords, do with a creature of an inferior sex in our
wanderings? Could she perform our feats of endurance? I questioned her
anxiously.

"_Moi?_" she laughed, "I am as strong as any man. You will see."

She leaped to her feet and, before I could protest, had picked me off
the ground like a kitten and was tossing me in her arms.

"_Voila!_" she said, depositing me tenderly on the grass; and having
collected the dislodged Narcisse she embraced her knees and laughed
again. It was a kind honest laugh; a good-natured, big boy's laugh,
coming full out of her eyes and shewing her strong white teeth. I lost
the sense of insult in admiration of her strength.

"You should have been a boy, Blanquette," said I.

She assented, acknowledging at once her inferiority and thus restoring
my self respect.

"You are lucky, you, to be one. In this world the egg is for the men and
the shell is for the women."

"Why don't you cut off your hair and put on boy's clothes?" I asked.
"Then you would get the egg. No one could tell the difference."

"You don't think I look like a woman? I? _Mon Dieu!_ Where are your
eyes?"

She was actually indignant with me who had thought to please her: my
first encounter with the bewildering paradox of woman.

"_Ah! mais non_," she panted. "I may be strong like a man, but _grace a
Dieu_, I don't resemble one. Look."

And she sat bolt upright, her hands at her waist developing her bust to
its full extent. She was not _jolie, jolie_, she explained, but she was
as solidly built as another; I was to examine myself and see how like I
was to the flattest of boards. Routed I chewed blades of grass in
silence until she spoke again.

"Tell me of the _patron_."

"The _patron_?" I asked, puzzled.

"Yes--Monsieur--your master."

"You must call him _maitre_," said I, "not _patron_." For the _patron_
was any peddling "boss," the leader of a troupe of performing dogs or
the miserabl