"I can make a couple of dozen with four cents' worth, and it ought to catch half a dozen bunnies—and the snares are used over and over again—unless the gamekeepers seize them."
"Here are four cents," said Aunt Angelique, "go and buy wire and get the rabbits to-morrow."
Wire was cheaper in the town than at the village so that Ange got material for twenty-four snares for three cents; he brought the odd copper to his aunt who was touched by this honesty. For an instant she felt like giving him the cent but unfortunately for Ange, it had been flattened by a hammer and might be passed in the dusk for a twosous piece. She thought it wicked to squander a piece that might bring a hundred per cent, and she popped it into her pouch.
Pitou made the snares and in the morning asked mysteriously for a bag. In it she put the bread and cheese for his meals, and away he went to his hunting ground.
Meanwhile she plucked the robins intended for their dinner; she took a brace of larks to Abbe Fortier, and two brace to the Golden Ball innkeeper, who paid her three cents for them and ordered as many as she could supply at that rate.
She went home beaming: the blessing of heaven had entered the house with Ange Pitou.
"They are quite right who say a good action is never thrown away," she observed as she munched the robins, as fat as ortolans and delicate as beccaficoes.
At dark in walked Ange, with the rounded out bag on his shoulders; Aunt Angelique received him on the threshold but not with a slap.
"Here I am, with my bag," said he with the calmness of having well spent his day.
"And what have you in the bag?" cried the aunt, stretching out her hand in sharp curiosity.