"What is the matter?" cried Aunt 'Gelique, who had never seen a more piteous mien. "Are you hungry?"
"No," replied Pitou dolefully.
The hearer was uneasy, for illness is a cause of alarm to good mothers and bad godmothers, as it forces expenses.
"It is a great misfortune," Pitou blubbered: "Father Fortier sends me home from school—so no more studies, no examination, no purse, no college——"
His sobs changed into howls while the woman stared at him to try to read in his soul the reason for this expulsion.
"I suppose you have been playing truant again," she said. "I hear that you are always roaming round Farmer Billet's place to catch a sight of his daughter Catherine. Fie, fie! very pretty conduct in a future priest!"
Ange shook his head.
"You lie," shrieked the old maid, with her anger rising with the growing certainty that it was a serious scrape. "Last Sunday you were again seen rambling in Lovers-Walk with Kate Billet."
It was she who fibbed but she was one who believed the end justified the means, and a whale-truth might be caught by throwing out a tub-lie.
"Oh, no, they could not have seen me there," cried Ange; "for we were out by the Orange-gardens."