"Yes, a pleasant time for a girl to remember. I was married at Pentecost. And there was the great procession. Dear! dear! It is not much over seventeen years ago and we have nine children."
"Pierre is a big lad, Madame, and a great help to his father. Children are a pleasure and comfort in one's old age if they do well. And thine are being well brought up. Marie is so good and steady. It is not wisdom for a man like me to choose a flighty girl."
"Marie will make a good wife," returned Madame, confidently.
And so when Marie returned it was all settled and Antoine had been invited to tea. Marie was in a desperate flutter. Of course there was nothing for her to say and she would not have had the courage to say it if there had been. But she could not help comparing him with Martin Lavosse, and some of the young men who greeted her at church. If his face were not quite so red, and his figure so clumsy! His hands, too, were broad with stubby ends to the fingers. She looked at her own; they were quite shapely, for youth has a way of throwing off the marks of toil that are ready enough to come back in later life.
"Ma fille," said her mother when the lover had wished them all good night, rather awkwardly, and her father had gone out to walk with him; "ma fille, Monsieur Beeson has done us the honor to ask for thy hand. He is a good, steady, well-to-do man with a nice home to take thee to. He does not carouse nor spend his money foolishly, but will always stay at home with thee, and make thee happy. Many a girl will envy thy lot. He wants the wedding about Christmas time, so the betrothal will be soon, in a week or so. Heaven bless and prosper thee, my child! A good daughter will not make an ill wife. Thy father is very proud."
Rose and Marie looked unutterable things at each other when they went to bed. There were little pitchers in the trundle-bed, and their parents in the next room.
"If he were not so old!" whispered Rose.
"And if he could dance! But with that figure!"
"Like a buffalo!" Marie's protest forced its way up from her heart. "And I have just begun to think of things that make one happy. There will be dances at Christmastide."
"I wonder if one is sure to love one's husband," commented Rose.