"Come, Monsieur Ledrux, tell us what you mean. Who lives in that house with a tower?"
"A very strange kind of man, and his dog. And the master's so fond of his dog, and the beast is so fond of his master, that they're just like two friends, who both do exactly what the other wants him to. When the dog happens to want to go in one direction, why then the master goes in that direction; he lets the animal lead him. And it seems that it's a good thing for him that he does, because the beast is so uncommon intelligent that no one ever saw his like; so that—But who's that going along the road yonder? I believe it's Doctor Antoine Beaubichon.—I beg pardon, excuse me, mesdames, but someone gave me a message for him, and I must find out if he's got it. I'll go out by the little gate yonder, that opens into the road, and I'll come right back. But I must find out whether the doctor's been told to go to Gournay to see the wine-dealer's sick child."
As he spoke, the peasant left the window of the summer-house, from which he had seen someone on the road, and, opening a small gate at the end of the garden, he was soon in the fields.
XIV
PAUL AND HIS DOG
Père Ledrux was no sooner out of the garden than he began to shout at the top of his lungs:
"Holà! Monsieur Antoine! Monsieur le Docteur Antoine!"
A short, stout individual, wrapped in a brown overcoat as long as a surplice, and with a low-crowned, very broad-brimmed hat on his head, which made him appear still shorter, halted in the middle of a cross-road and looked up in the air, saying:
"Who's calling me?" as if he thought that the voice he had heard came from a balloon.
"Pardi! it's me calling you; it ain't a bird, it's me, Ledrux—this way."
"Ah! it's you, is it, Père Ledrux? What are you doing here?"