"Oh! I have an idea that it's pretty well mortgaged! I've often seen Guillot going to Monsieur Jarnouillard's, and bless me! round here, when you say: 'He goes to Jarnouillard's,' that means that his affairs are in bad shape, that he needs money!"
"Poor people! But Poucette's uncle is a hard-working man, you said?"
"To be sure; but you understand, when you have to feed so many mouths—and then the potatoes being bad last year, and that was Guillot's only crop! When you count on a thing and it goes back on you, why, it's rather upsetting!—Tutu—turlututu!"
XX
THE ENVIRONS OF CHELLES.—POUCETTE.—AMI
"We're heading now as if we was going to Gournay," said the gardener, trotting in front of the two ladies; "this will help you to know the way when you want to go to walk in the neighborhood; and especially if you happen to feel like eating a matelote; for Gournay's famous for them, you know."
The peasant led them past the railroad station, which is on the road from Chelles to Gournay. Beyond the station they found themselves on a fine road bordered by tall poplars and enclosed by ditches filled with water, which prevented passers-by from walking in the fields on the other side of the ditches.
Both to the right and left the country was flat for some distance; it was a beautiful valley interspersed with coverts arranged for the express purpose of affording the game a place of rest and shelter.
"This is a very fine road," said Agathe, after they had been walking on it for ten minutes, "but it is too straight, too monotonous; I don't like roads where you never can tell whether you are going forward; is it like this very much longer?"
"No, mamzelle. Look; where you see that stone on the left, we make a turn, and then we shall have Gournay before us, and the view is more varied."