rish church
of the quaint little town--and a certain extra excitement is
communicated to the settlers under the canvas-covered booths and to the
humbler sellers of wares in baskets. Mademoiselle Lesage, a short, plump
young woman dressed in black, flits in and out of the chattering crowd
more busily than usual. Mademoiselle holds herself of a rank above the
country-folk who bring in their poultry and garden produce to Aubette.
In token of this she wears a round black mushroom-shaped hat, and a
holland apron with two deep pockets in virtue of her office; for
Mademoiselle Lesage has an enterprising spirit. She found herself at
thirty years old left alone in the world with an ugly face and with an
insufficient "dot." Mademoiselle Lesage is ambitious: she does not care
to marry a very poor man, and she has managed to give the town council
of Aubette such security that it allows her to farm the market yearly
for some hundreds of francs. Watch her collecting her dues. She goes
rapidly from stall to stall, jingling her pockets, laughing and chatting
with the farmers' wives, all the time keeping a hawk's eye on the
basket-carriers, not one of whom may presume to sell so much as an onion
without the weekly toll of one sou. She darts in and out among them, and
her pockets swell out in front as if they were stuffed with apples.

She has left Marie Famette's stall till the last. She crosses over to it
now as quickly as she can go, but there is no means of darting in and
out here, as there was just now among the basket-women. Old Floris
Marceau has covered a good-sized space with his heap of green and yellow
melons, and he stands behind these marchandeing, gesticulating,
brandishing the knife with which he slices his citrouilles and
inveighing against the folly of his customers. "Will mam'selle believe,"
he says, addressing her as she approaches, and wiping his knife on his
often-patched blouse, "they come to buy fruit of a respectable
vegetable-seller and they don't know the price of a melon? Ten sous for
a cantaloupe like that!" His blue eyes gleamed furiously under his
frowning gray eyebrows. "Ten sous! I told them to be off and buy
chickens." He broke into a laugh, and pointed to a tall, bent old
gentleman, who seemed covered with confusion at this public rebuke, and
sidled his way out of the throng without attempting an answer.

"Buy a turkey, m'sieur?" A smiling, dark-eyed woman in a close-setting
white cap went on with the j