The day of our first communion came at last; and, returning from church, I made such strong resolutions not to give way to my lawlessness any more that I followed Brulette home to her grandfather's house, as the best example I could lay hold of to guide me.
While she went, at Mariton's bidding, to milk the goat, Joseph and I stayed talking with his mother in my uncle's room.
We were looking at the devotional images which the curate had given us in remembrance of the sacrament,—or rather I was, for Joseph was thinking of something else, and fingered them without seeing what they were. So the others paid no attention to us; and presently Mariton said to her old neighbor, alluding to our first communion,—
"Well, it is a good thing done, and now I can hire my lad out to work. I have decided to do what I told you I should."
My uncle shook his head sadly, and she continued:
"Just listen to one thing, neighbor. My José has got no mind. I know that, worse luck! He takes after his poor deceased father, who hadn't two ideas a week, but who was a well-to-do and well-behaved man, for all that. Still, it is an infirmity to have so little faculty in your head, because if ill-luck has it that a man marries a silly wife, everything goes to the bad in a hurry. That's why I said to myself, when I saw my boy growing so long in the legs, that his brain would never feed him; and that if I could only leave him a little sum of money I should die happy. You know the good a few savings can do. In our poor homes it is everything. Now, I have never been able to lay by a penny, and I do suppose I'm not young enough to please a man, for I have not remarried. Well, if that's so, God's will be done! I am still young enough to work; and so I may as well tell you, neighbor, that the innkeeper at Chartier wants a servant. He pays good wages,—thirty crowns a year! besides perquisites, which come to half as much again. With all that, strong and lively as I know I am, I shall have made my fortune in ten years. I can take my ease in my old days, and leave a little something to my poor boy. What do you say to that?"
Père Brulet thought a little, and then replied,—
"You are wrong, neighbor; indeed you are wrong!"
Mariton thought too; and then, understanding what the old man meant, she said,—
"No doubt, no doubt. A woman is exposed to blame in a country inn; even if she behaves properly, people won't believe it. That's what you meant, isn't it? Well, but what am I to do? Of course it deprives me of all chance of re-marrying; but we don't regret what we suffer for our children,—indeed, sometimes we rejoice in it."