He laughed, and with a proud air raised above his head a bundle of feathers, four plovers and a teal tied together. The next moment, resting the gun he carried against the inside of the wall, and flinging over the birds, he dropped down beside Rousille.
"Rousille," he said, taking her hand under the arching apple-trees, "I have had luck! Four plovers and such fine ones! I had a couple of hours' sleep in the barn at La Pinçonnière, and if the farmer had not dragged me out this morning, I should have been late, I was so sound asleep. And you?"
"I," replied Marie-Rose, as he sat opposite to her, "I am afraid. Father spoke to me so angrily last night—he had been talking to Mathurin in the courtyard—they must know."
"Well, and if they do? I am doing nothing to anger them. I mean to win you by my work, to ask your father for your hand, and take you home as my wife."
She looked at him, happy, despite her fears, at the determination she read in the lad's face. And reserving her thought which answered yes, she said without direct reply:
"What is it like in your home?"
"In my home," replied Jean Nesmy, contracting his eyes as if to fix the picture thus evoked, and looking over Rousille's head—"in my home is my mother, who is old and poor. The house she lives in is called the Château, as I have told you before, in the parish of Châtelliers; but it is not by any means a castle, Rousille, only two rooms, in which live six little Nesmys besides myself, who am the eldest ... it was, as you know, on account of our poverty and the number of children that I could only serve one year in the army."
"Oh, yes, I remember," she answered, laughing, "that year seemed to me longer than any other."
"I am the eldest; then come two girls, who are growing up. They are not dressed altogether like you, for instance...."
An idea seized him, and with his hand quite near yet without touching Rousille, he sketched about the young girl's shoulders and waist, the little shawl and the long velvet ribbons encircling the bust. "All round there two rows of velvet; rich girls have even three. You would be charming, Rousille, in the costume of the Châtelliers and La Flocellière, for they dress in the same manner, the villages are quite close."