"Help me to fill the oven," she said.
One by one the loaves of leavened dough were placed by Rousille upon a large flat shovel, which Eléonore slid over the burning bricks, and drew out again with a sharp jerk. Twenty loaves there were of twelve pound each; enough wherewith to feed all at La Fromentière, and to give to the poor of Monday for a fortnight. The last having been placed, Eléonore closed the mouth of the oven with an iron plate; the sisters had wiped their hot cheeks with their sleeves, the smell of new bread was beginning to be perceptible through the chinks of the oven, when a loud laughing voice called in from the yard:
"M François Lumineau. Is he at home?" and the postman, a visitor who had been seen fairly often at La Fromentière for some months past, held out a letter with printed heading on it. He added jocosely, for something to say:
"Another letter from the State Railways, Mam'selle Eléonore. Any of you got friends there?"
"Thank you," returned Eléonore, hastily taking the letter and putting it into the pocket of her apron, "I will give it to my brother. Fine weather to-day for your round?"
"Aye, that it is. Better than for heating the oven I should say by the look of you." The man made a half-turn on his well-worn shoes, and went his way in the steady jog-trot of seven leagues a day at thirty sous.
Eléonore, leaning against the doorpost, paid no further attention to him; she was gazing, as if hypnotized, on the corner of white paper that protruded from her pocket. She seemed strangely agitated, her eyelids swelled, her breast heaved beneath the calico bodice all streaked with flour and soot.
"There is some secret, I am sure," exclaimed Marie-Rose from behind her. "I do not ask what it is, I am accustomed at home to be left to myself. But still I cannot help seeing what is going on; only yesterday, after mass, you and François went off by yourselves to read some paper in the lane by the Michelonnes, I was there to fetch my money, and saw you gesticulating.... And now you are crying. It is hard, Eléonore, to see one's sister cry and not to know the reason—not to be able to say one word to comfort her."
To Rousille's intense surprise, Eléonore, without turning, held out a trembling hand towards her, and drew her younger sister tumultuously to her beating heart; and for the first time for many years, overcome with emotion, she leant her cheek on Rousille's, then suddenly broke out into sobs.
"Yes," she sobbed, "there is a secret, my poor Rousille, such a secret that I can never have the like again in all my life. I cannot tell it to you ... it is there in the letter ... but François must read it first, and then father—Heavens! what an unhappy girl I am!"