“No; but this—Nicette cried lustily till the waters of baptism redeemed her, and thereafter never again: so early was the devil expelled from that sweet shrine.”
“And the little brother—is he a saint too?”
Théroigne laughed contemptuously.
“Baptiste? Oh, to be sure! the little unregenerate! He is the devil’s imp rather.”
“They are orphans?”
“Since three years. The girl mothers him, the graceless rogue.”
“I wronged her in ignorance, you see. That club of good-fellowship—it was all so concordant, so much in harmony with its own laws of frolic give-and-take. Why should a very saint be superior to so genial a fraternity?”
“We are a fraternity, as monsieur says, extending the hand of brotherhood to——”
She broke off, uttering a sharp exclamation as of terror or disgust, and shrunk back against the well rim. A figure had come into view—by way of the meadow path, up which Nicette had borne her load of fodder—and had paused over against the fountain, where it stood obsequiously bowing and gesticulating. It was that of a tall, large-boned man, fair-haired, apple-faced, with a mild, deprecating expression in its big blue eyes. Its head was crowned with a greasy cloth cap, shaped like the half of a tomato; its shirt, of undesirable fustian, was strangely decorated over the left breast with a yellow badge cut into something the shape of a duck’s foot; its full small-clothes—that came pretty high to the waist and were braced over the shoulders with leather bands, yoked to others running horizontally across chest and back—seemed in their every stereotyped crease the worn expression of humility.
“What is it, my friend?” said Ned.