Etienne stopped and gazed quizzically at the young man who thus expounded the law for lovers.
“I think you have in you none of the understanding of the French habitants who have live the three generation on one farm so that a young man, no matter if he love a mam'selle so very much that all the bread he eat taste ashes in his mouth—ah, he cannot say 'I will leave—I will go!' For then that young man must turn himself to be anodder young man—and the habitant does not so change.”
“I may be a poor judge,” acknowledged Farr. “I have never yet taken root in the soil of any one place.”
“And I think, mebbe, the girl you do not understand! Is it to stay in the home and hear every day about you love the pig of a Leroux, bah? No, no, m'sieu'! That's too proud, is Zelie Dionne. And so is Zelie Dionne too proud to take a son from a home that do not want her. So they wait.”
“It's a tough old world, Uncle Etienne,” said Farr. “Why, even I, lord of my own affairs as I am, don't know where I'm going to sleep to-night. Do you have a boarding-place?”
“I have my little room on the block up there—my room and my place at the big table. It is not grand. But there is place for you—and anodder little room. If you like you shall come and I will speak good for you.”
“All right, Etienne! Take me along and speak good for me.”
It was another such place as Block Ten. It was a crowded and stuffy warren, and the basement kitchen advertised itself with stale odors in all the corridors. But Farr was glad to stretch himself upon the narrow bed. He owned up to himself that he was a very weary bird of passage and confessed to his own heart, just as frankly, that he was a captive in the frail grasp of a little girl—and he did not try to understand.