"No, thanks! I have only come to bring you a message from grandmamma. It is about the Confirmation dinner next Monday; but you know all about that, as you are the mayor?"
"Well, grandmamma would like to have some very nice peaches for Monday, and some very nice pears; in fact, all kinds of nice things, such as grow in your orchard."
"They shall bring you them, Mad'moiselle Denyse! You can be quite easy about that. I'll see they are well chosen." And then, as the young girl turned her horse round, he said, as he watched her, almost dazed with admiration: "Are you going to start back already, mad'moiselle? Won't you stop and have some refreshment—a bowl of milk now? I know you like a drop o' good milk!" And then, in a persuasive tone, he added, as he took hold of Patatras' bridle, "That 'ud give the horse a rest, too; he's very warm after the run."
Farmer Lavenue's way of talking always amused Bijou. It had been more than ten years now since the sturdy Norman had emigrated to Touraine, and yet he had not lost his strong Norman accent in the slightest degree.
It was Madame de Bracieux, who, thoroughly dissatisfied with the Touraine farmers, had taken up this man. Charlemagne Lavenue had never fraternised with the regular inhabitants of the place. He was looked up to and admired by the simple-minded and unskilful villagers, who saw him making money in the very place where others had been ruined. He had, by "sending for people from his part of the world," gradually transformed The Borderettes into a small Normandy, and he had so much influence now in the place that he, an interloper, had been elected mayor of Bracieux, to the exclusion of the former notables of the place.
As Denyse did not reply, he lifted her down from her horse, saying as he did so: "You will, mad'moiselle, won't you?" And then, after giving the reins to the old groom, he led the way to the door of the farm, and stood aside for Bijou to enter.
"How nice it is here, Monsieur Lavenue," she exclaimed, in a pleasant way. "Have I ever seen this room before? No, I don't think I have!"
"Yes, you've seen it, mad'moiselle, only, you know, it's been fresh white-washed, and, you see, that makes it different-like."
"When you are married, now," she said, smiling, "it will be very nice, indeed."