"Yes. I come from Phalsbourg; and I am going to rest myself a minute before going down to the village. Is Catherine here?"
And then the good man came forward to the light, his hat pushed off his face, and his roll of sheepskins on his back.
"Good-night, my children," said he; "good-night! Always at work!"
"Yes, Monsieur Hullin, as you see," replied Jeanne, laughing. "If one had nothing to do, life would be very wearisome."
"True, my pretty girl, true. It is only work which gives you your roses and brilliant eyes."
Jeanne was going to answer, when the door of the great room opened, and Catherine Lefèvre advanced, looking piercingly at Hullin, as though to guess beforehand what news he brought.
"Well, Jean-Claude, you have returned."
"Yes, Catherine; with good tidings and bad."
They entered the large room—a high and spacious apartment wainscoted with wood to the ceiling, with its oak closets and their shining clasps, its iron stove opening into the kitchen, its old clock counting the seconds in its walnut-wood case, and the leathern arm-chair, worn and used by ten generations of aged men. Jean-Claude never went into this room without its bringing back to his remembrance Catherine's grandfather, whom he seemed still to see, with his white head, sitting behind the oven in the dark.
"Well?" demanded the old dame, offering a chair to the old shoemaker, who was just putting his pack down on the table.