On such occasions, if anybody wished to make friends with him, it was necessary to say:
"Ah! Mademoiselle, what a nice girl you make."
That put him into a good humor, and he used to reply, much pleased:
"Don't I? But people can see I only do it for a joke."
But, nevertheless, when they were dancing at village festivals in the neighborhood, he would always be invited to dance as Mademoiselle, and would never ask any of the girls to dance with him; and one evening when somebody asked him the reason for this, he opened his eyes wide, laughed as if the man had said something very stupid, and replied:
"I cannot ask the girls because I am not dressed like a lad. Just look at my dress, you fool!"
As his interrogator was a judicious man, he said to him:
"Then dress like one, Mademoiselle."
He thought for a moment, and then said with a cunning look:
"But if I dress like a lad, I shall no longer be a girl; but then, I am a girl;" and he shrugged his shoulders as he said it.