"Not for ten months," was her reply. "Why do you ask?"
"Wouldn't he like to be nearer you and Zoe? It's twelve miles to
Beauharnais," he replied.
"Are you thinking of offering him another place at the Manor?" she asked sharply.
"Well, there is the new cheese-factory—not to manage, but to keep the books! He's doing them all right for the lumber-firm. I hear that he—"
"I don't want it. No good comes from relatives working together. Look at the Latouche farm where your cousin makes his mess. My father is well enough where he is."
"But you'd like to see him oftener—I was only thinking of that," said Jean Jacques in a mollifying voice. It was the kind of thing in which he showed at once the weakness and the kindness of his nature. He was in fact not a philosopher, but a sentimentalist.
"If mother doesn't think it's sensible, why do it, father?" asked Zoe anxiously, looking up into her father's face.
She had seen the look in her mother's eyes, and also she had no love for her grandfather. Her instinct had at one time wavered regarding him; but she had seen an incident with a vanished female cook, and though she had not understood, a prejudice had been created in her mind. She was always contrasting him with M. Fille, who, to her mind, was what a grandfather ought to be.
"I won't have him beholden to you," said Carmen, almost passionately.
"He is of my family," said Jean Jacques firmly and chivalrously. "There is no question of being beholden."