“Why, Germain? I don’t know why you have such a bad idea of this woman; you will change your mind.”
“The devil take the woman!” exclaimed Germain. “I wish I were going away from her forever. What do I want of a wife whom I don’t know?”
“Little father,” said the child, “why is it that you speak so much of your wife today, since she is dead?”
“Then you have not forgotten your poor, dear mother?”
“No; for I saw her placed in a beautiful box of white wood, and my grandmother led me up to her to kiss her and say goodbye. She was very white and very stiff, and every evening my aunt made me pray God that she might go to him in Heaven and be warm. Do you think that she is there now?”
“I hope so, my child; but you must always pray. It shows your mother that you love her.”
“I am going to say my prayers,” answered the boy. “I forgot them tonight. But I can’t say them all alone, for I always forget something. Little Marie must help me.”
“Yes, my Pierre, I will help you,” said the young girl. “Come and kneel down in my lap.”
The child knelt down on the girl’s skirt. He clasped his little hands and began to say his prayers, at first with great care and earnestness, for he knew the beginning very well, then slowly and with more hesitation, and finally repeating word by word after Marie, when he came to that place in his prayer where sleep overtook him so invariably that he had never been able to learn the end. This time again the effort of close attention and the monotony of his own accent produced their wonted effect. He pronounced the last syllables with great difficulty, and only after they were thrice repeated.
His head grew heavy and fell on Marie’s breast; his hands unclasped, divided, and fell open on his knees. By the light of the campfire, Germain watched his little darling hushed at the heart of the young girl, who, as she held him in her arms and warmed his fair hair with her sweet breath, had herself fallen into a holy reverie, and prayed in quiet for the soul of Catherine.
Germain was touched. He tried to express to little Marie the grateful esteem which he felt for her, but he could find no fitting words.
He approached her to kiss his son, whom she held close to her breast, and he could scarcely raise his lips from little Pierre’s brow.
“You kiss too hard,” said Marie, gently pushing away the husbandman’s head. “You will wake him. Let me put him back to bed, for the boy has left us already for dreams of paradise.”
The child allowed Marie to lay him down, but feeling the goatskin on the saddle, he asked if he were on the gray. Then opening his big blue eyes, and keeping them fixed on the branches for a minute, he seemed to be dreaming, wide-awake as he was, or to be struck with an idea which had slipped his mind during the daytime, and only assumed a distinct form at the approach of sleep.
“Little father,” said he, “if you wish to give me a new mother, I hope it will be little Marie.”
And without waiting for an answer, he closed his eyes and slept.
IX
Despite the Cold
Little Marie seemed to give no more heed to the child’s odd words than to regard them as a proof of friendship. She wrapped him up with care, stirred the fire, and as the fog resting on the neighboring pool gave no sign of lifting, she advised Germain to lie near the fire and take a nap.
“I see that you are sleepy already,” said she, “for you don’t say a word and you gaze into the fire, just as your little boy was doing.”
“It is you who must sleep,” answered the husbandman, “and I will take care of both of you, for I have never felt less sleepy than I do now. I have fifty things to think of.”
“Fifty is a great many,” said the little girl, with a mocking accent. “There are lots of people who would be delighted to have one.”
“Well, if I am too stupid to have fifty, I have one, at least, which has not left me for the past hour.”
“And I shall tell it to you as well as I told you those you thought of before.”
“Yes, do tell me if you know, Marie. Tell me yourself. I shall be glad to hear.”
“An hour ago,” she answered, “your idea was to eat—and now it is to sleep.”
“Marie, I am only an ox-driver, but, upon my word, you take me for an ox. You are very perverse, and it is easy to see that you do not care to talk to me, so go to sleep. That will be better than to pick flaws in a man who is out of sorts.”
“If you wish to talk, let’s talk,” said the girl, half reclining near the child and resting her head against the saddle. “You torment yourself, Germain, and you do not show much courage for a man. What wouldn’t I say if I didn’t do my best to fight my own troubles?”
“Yes, that’s very true, and that’s just what I am thinking of, my poor child. You are going to live, away from your friends, in a horrid country full of moors and fens, where you will catch the autumn fevers. Sheep do not pay well there, and this
