“But you are old—how old?”
Cuerrier took his pipe from his mouth and traced in the air what to Alexis’s eyes looked like the figure fifty. Cuerrier offered him the candle. “There is not a gray hair in my head.” Girouard took the light and glanced down on his friend’s shock of brown hair so finely disordered. He sat down satisfied.
“To whom now—tell me what charming girl is to be the postmistress of Viger; is it the Madame Laroque?”
Cuerrier broke again into one of his valiant laughs.
“Guess again,” he cried, “you are near it. You’ll burn yourself next time.”
“Not the second cousin—not possible—not Césarine Angers?”
Cuerrier, grown more sober, had made various signs of acquiescence.
“And what will your friend the widow say?”
“See here, Alexis, she’s—” he was going to say something violent—“she’s one of the troubles.”
“Bah! Who’s afraid of her! If you had Diana to deal with, now.”