Farmer Lavenue, who was looking at Bijou with hungry eyes, held his head up erect, and then, shaking it slowly, he answered, with some hesitation:
"I can't decide to give the farm a mistress, because I don't come across one as suits me." And after a moment's silence, he added: "That is to say, amongst them as I could have."
"Why, how's that? any of the girls from Bracieux, or Combes, or from the villages round The Borderettes, would marry you, Monsieur Lavenue, and there are some very pretty girls among them."
"I can't see as they are," he answered, blushing, and twisting about in his fingers the huge, broad-brimmed hat which he always wore the whole year round.
"You are difficult to please, then; do you mean that you don't think Catherine Lebour pretty?"
"No, Mad'moiselle Denyse."
"Nor Josephine Lacaille?"
"No, Mad'moiselle Denyse."
"And Louise Pature?"
"No, mad'moiselle."