"Bonjour, mère, how goes it?" He nodded as he sketched at a wrinkled, bent figure, who was smiling out at him from beneath her load of mussels.
"Pas mal—e' vous, M'sieur Renard?"
"All right—and the mortgage, how goes that?"
"Pas si mal—it'll be paid off next year."
"Who is she? One of your models?"
"Yes, last year's: she was my belle—the belle of the mussel-bed for me, a year ago. Now there's a lesson in patience for you. She's sixty-five, if she's a minute; she's been working here, on this mussel-bed, for five years, to pay the mortgage off her farm; when that is done, her daughter Augustine can marry; Augustine's dot is the farm."
"Augustine—at our inn?"
"The very same."
"And the blonde—the handsome man at the creamery, he is the future—?"
"I'm sorry to hear such things of Augustine," smiled Renard, as he worked; "she must be indulging in an entr'acte. No, the gentleman of Augustine's—well, perhaps not of her affections, but of her mother's choice, is a peasant who works the farm; the creamery is only an incidental diversion. Again, I'm sorry to hear such sad things of Augustine—"