“Suppose we ask to hear it to-morrow,” he said, “for a treat? Mother is always ready to give us a treat on her birthday.”
“Not instead of the creams and the cake,” put in Joseph, who was rather a greedy little boy. “I wouldn’t like that. Stories aren’t as nice as cake.”
“Little glutton!” exclaimed Pierre: “you deserve to have none. All the same I know what I know. One has but to step inside the kitchen and to sniff a little to see that mother forgets nothing.”
“Indeed!” said Joseph, with satisfaction. “Yes, truly, I could almost fancy I smelt it even in here. That comes of having an oven of one’s own. There is no other house at Valmont with an oven like ours. When I am a man, if I cannot afford an oven of my own in my kitchen, I shall—”
“What?” asked Marie.
“I shall be a baker,” said Joseph, solemnly. “I always stop before the door of Bernard, the baker, to smell the bread, especially on Saturdays, when he is baking the Sunday cakes and his Reverence’s pie. Ah, how it smells!”
“A baker!” said Pierre with disdain. “Not for worlds! To see Bernard stewing away in his bakehouse till he can scarcely breathe is enough to make one hate the thoughts of cakes. A baker indeed! Ah, no—the open air and the fields for me! I shall be a farmer, like my father and my grandfathers and my great-grandfathers. We have always been plain, honest farmers, we Marcels—and my mother’s people, the Laurents, too!”
“Some one told me once,” said Edmée, who, her work finished, was standing thoughtfully contemplating the effect of the pretty wreath round the little face, “some one told me once, or I dreamt it, that the little old portrait was that of a great-grandmother of ours. I wonder if it is true? If all our people have always been farmers I don’t see how it can be, for that little girl doesn’t look like a farmer’s daughter—and besides, they wouldn’t have made a grand picture of her in that case.”
“Mother must know,” said Marie.
“I asked her once if it was true,” said Edmée, “but she said I was to wait till I was older, and she would tell us the story. I would so like to hear it. She is so sweet, that dear little girl. I wonder if she lived to grow old. How strange to think of her, that little baby-face, growing into an old woman, with grey hair.”