Val did not answer. Her rage expended, she was wondering what her Brannie was going to have for dinner the next day. Two great tears stole down her face.
When Haidee came back from eight o'clock Mass the next morning she noticed many of the villagers standing about in groups. They were evidently discussing some affair of great interest, but their grave and serious voices subsided into whispers at the sight of her, and while she passed a dead silence prevailed in each group. However, in front of Lemonier's shop an old beldame lifted her voice in the manner of a prophetess and gave forth the dark saying that "it was to be hoped that people who threw good meat to dogs would never live to feel the pangs of hunger!"
Haidee repeated this at home as a great joke, but was sorry she did, for Val turned pale as a condemned criminal, and her eyes searched the faces of both children as if for the outward signs of an inward gnawing at their vitals--but so far both looked plump and composed.
She spent the whole morning juggling with six eggs and a pint of milk, the result being an exceedingly wobbly-looking baked custard which appeared to supplement the meagre midday repast. At the sight of it Bran nearly lost his appetite for the potatoes baked in their jackets which his soul loved, and when pudding-time came he began to squirm and declare he was not hungry. With the name of Bran he appeared to have also inherited that great king's primitive tastes in food, for he cared for nothing except milk, oatmeal porridge, and potatoes with butter.
"Do eat some, Brannie," pleaded the pale and guilty Val. "I made it specially for you. It is lovely."
"Yes, I can see it is lovely," said Brannie, politely, edging away from the table. "But it smells like a pussy cat just after she has been drinking milk."
When Hortense arrived to wash up she reported that the two brothers of the bonne at the Café Rosetta were in the village, having been summoned from Cherbourg by telegraph to come and lunch with their sister on a shoulder of Première Communion lamb.
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The confirmation ceremony was most grand. It was the first time so important a personage as an Archbishop had visited Mascaret, and the villagers, sensible of the honour done them, were inclined to forgive the curé his imagined misdeeds for having arranged it. Not only were all the Premier Communion candidates from other villages present, but a great many of the summer visitors had arrived, and it was an enormous congregation that waited in the stuffy church. The Archbishop's train was late, but at last he came from the sacristy very crumpled and tired-looking in his gold and purple robes, and walking with faltering feet, for his years were heavy on him and he was weary with travelling. Everything about him seemed old, from the rich lace on his aube to his gentle blue eyes, which looked as though they saw visions of far-off places--everything but the small and wonderful white teeth in his sunken gentle mouth. His stole was beautifully painted with lilies, and his mitre of shining white and gold most splendid, but sometimes during the long service his head drooped a little under it and rested on his breast. There was such a weariness about him that Val was glad when she heard a few months later that he had laid aside his heavy and elaborate gold and white panoply of office and gone to rest. He had about twelve priests with him, keen, able-looking men, of a very different type to the simple curés who were herding their flocks from the surrounding villages, and they clustered about him as though to keep the eyes of the world from resting too long upon this venerable representative of the Pope. The Vicaire-Général, a splendid looking man with an eagle eye and a strong beaked nose, surveyed the church as a general might the field of battle, while the congregation chanted the Benedictus Dominus. It seemed to Val that when his eye rested on her he saw deep down into her heart and had no pity for her failures, being of the Napoleonic brand of man who has no use for any but the strong ones of earth.
After the Archbishop with crumpled crooked fingers had given his solemn benediction to the people, singing in a trembling yet wonderfully thrilling old voice,