"Oh! the good dog! how grateful the child's parents must be to him!"
"Parents?—the little fellow who was drowning hasn't any; it was the lost child."
"The lost child! Mon Dieu! what does that mean?"
"The peasants have given that name to the little fellow, because no one, not even his nurse, knows to whom he belongs. It's a mysterious story."
"Tell us about it, doctor; you always have interesting things to tell, and we enjoy them ever so much."
"You see—the local disease, curiosity, is taking hold of you!"
"That's very possible; but tell us about the lost child."
"First of all, I must tell you, mesdames, that about four years ago the widow Tourniquoi won a prize in a lottery. I don't know just what lottery it was, but that makes no difference to our story—the important point is that the widow Tourniquoi, who was not rich, and who had two children to bring up, won, I believe, about twenty thousand francs. To a peasant that is a large fortune! Thereupon this woman, who has an excellent heart, wrote to a sister of hers at Morfontaine, near Ermenonville; this sister was a widow also, and was not fortunate; so Madame Tourniquoi wrote to her to come to her; to leave Morfontaine, where she had no regular work, and come to live with her.
"Naturally the poor sister asked nothing better than to join her sister who was wealthy, or, at least, in comfortable circumstances. So she arrived at Chelles one fine day with a little boy about three years and a half old.
"'Hallo!' said Madame Tourniquoi to Jacqueline—that is her sister's name—'I thought you didn't have any children, that you lost your only one when he was only a year old. But never mind, you and your son are welcome.'