Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/250

 of a mile beyond the village. Her father had been métayer; and when he died, his son Firman—a fine-looking young man, not long home from his service—had taken his place. So the change at the métairie had very little affected Jeanne-Marie.

But she missed her father sorely every day at mid-day, when she remembered that there was one less to cook for; that the tall, straight old figure would not come in at the door, and that the black pudding might remain uncooked for all Firman's noticing; and Jeanne-Marie would put the bouillon by the fire, and sit down and cry softly to herself.

They were very kind to her at the villa, and at night, when Firman was at the café, she would take the stockings and the linen and darn them in the kitchen, while she listened to the servants' talk, and suppressed her patois as much as possible, for they were from the North, and would not understand.

Two years after her father's death, Jeanne-Marie began to notice that Firman went no more to the café in the evening, and had always his shirt clean, and his best black smocked cape for the market in the town on Mondays, and for Mass on Sundays.

"It astonishes me," she had said, when she was helping M. François' cook that day the château-folk had come to déjeûner, unexpectedly—for Jeanne-Marie's cooking was very good indeed—"because, you understand, that is not his way at all. Now, if it were Paul Puyoo or the young André, it would be quite ordinary; but with Firman, I doubt with him it is a different thing."

And Anna had nodded her black head sagely over the omelette aux fines herbes as she answered: "Jeanne-Marie, Firman wishes to marry; Jeanne-Marie, for my own part, I say it's that little fat blue-eyed Suzanne from the métairie on the hill."