"I need no beguiling," answered the waif, "for I am not weary."
"That is the first pretty speech you have made me, François!"
"If it is a pretty speech, I made it by accident, for I do not understand that sort of thing."
Sévère was exasperated, but she would not as yet give in to the truth.
"The boy must be a simpleton," said she to herself. "If I make him lose his way, he will have to stay a little longer with me."
So she tried to mislead him, and to induce him to turn to the left when he was going to the right.
"You are making a mistake," said she; "this is the first time you have been over this road. I know it better than you do. Take my advice, or you will make me spend the night in the woods, young man!"
When François had once been over a road, he knew it so perfectly that he could find his way in it at the end of a year.
"No, no," said he, "this is the right way, and I am not in the least out of my head. The mare knows it too, and I have no desire to spend the night rambling about the woods."
Thus he reached the farm of Dollins, where Sévère lived, without losing a quarter of an hour and without giving an opening as wide as the eye of a needle to her advances. Once there, she tried to detain him, insisting that the night was dark, that the water had risen, and that he would have difficulty in crossing the fords. The waif cared not a whit for these dangers, and, bored with so many foolish words, he struck the mare with his heels, galloped off without waiting to hear the rest, and returned swiftly to the mill, where Madeleine Blanchet was waiting for him, grieved that he should come so late.