"Jean Nesmy."
One by one, like the beads of a rosary being told, and that pass between the fingers of the devotee, the sentences of the letter passed through the mind of Marie-Rose, and her eyes gazing intently on the landscape, saw only the image of Jean Nesmy. The young girl saw him in his coat with the horn buttons, his high cheek-bones, his eager eyes that only laughed for her and for good work done, when at the close of day, his scythe slung on to his bare arm, he scanned the corn he had cut, and the sheaves he had tied standing upright in the stubble.
"Father no longer talks against him," thought she. "He even defended him once to Mathurin. As for me, he has never found me complain, nor refuse to do the work I had to do, and I think he is pleased with me for having done my best. If André were to settle down now, and to bring a wife to La Fromentière, perhaps father would not refuse to let me marry. And I begin to think that Master André has his reasons for absenting himself on Sundays, and going off to Saint Jean, Perrier, and Saint Gervais, as he does...."
She smiled. Her eyes had taken the colour of the fresh straw that surrounded her. Far away, on the road to the meadows, she saw a fine strapping youth walking with swaying movement, carrying over one shoulder a pole to jump the dykes with.
"Driot," she murmured. "I will tease him about his Sunday walks."
Soon she saw André come up the hill, skirt the dwarf orchard, then pass between the leafless hedges in the road. When he was at a little distance, she coughed to attract his attention. He looked up. His face which had worn an anxious expression cleared; instead of continuing his way to the courtyard of La Fromentière, he jumped over into a small field that ran beside it, passed the row of hives where the bees were sleeping their winter sleep, and stopped beside Rousille in the threshing-floor, leaning on his pole. As he did so, he endeavoured to assume the half-bantering, half-protecting air he usually adopted towards his sister, thinking himself obliged to laugh with her as with a child.
"I was looking for you," he said.
"Oh, you were looking for me very badly then. Your head was bent down. I believe you were thinking of someone else than me."
"Indeed!"
"Yes. Where do you come from with your pole, you roamer? Not from vespers?"