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noise ceased.

René-Jean remained thoughtful.

How are ideas lormed and scattered in these little brains? What is the mysterious commotion in their memories so dim and as yet so short? In this sweet, pensive mind arose a mixture of the good God, prayer, folded hands, a strange tender smile that used to rest on them, and that they had no longer, and René-Jean murmured, half aloud: "Mamma."

"Mamma," said Gros-Alain.

"M'ma," said Georgette,

And then René-Jean began to jump.

Seeing him jump, Gross-Alain jumped too.

Gros-Alain followed René-Jean's example in all his movements and gestures; Georgette not so much. Three years copies four years; but twenty months keeps its independence.

Georgette remained seated, saying a word now and then. Georgette did not put words together.

She was a thinker; she spoke in apothegms. She was monosyllabic.

Nevertheless, after a time, their example affected her, and she finally tried to do as her brothers were doing, and these three little pairs of bare feet began to dance, to run and totter in the dust on the old, polished oak floor, under the serious eyes of the marble busts, toward which Georgette occasionally cast an anxious glance, murmuring,—

"The mummums!"

In Georgette's language a mummum was anything which looked like a man without really being one. Beings seem like phantoms to young children.

Georgette, swaying rather than walking, followed her brothers, but generally she preferred to go on all fours.

Suddenly, René-Jean, as he was approaching a