“You have won her heart with your snuff.”
“She has won mine with her discretion.”
“Oh-h!” said Jeanne, shocked.
And so on and so forth, as they sat side by side on the kitchen table, swinging their feet. After a while they drifted to graver questions.
“What will happen to you, Jeanne, if your aunt dies?”
“Mon Dieu!” said Jeanne——
“But you will inherit the property, and the business?”
By no means. Aunt Morin had still a son, who was already very old. He must be forty-six. He had expatriated himself many years ago and was in Madagascar. The son who was killed was her Benjamin, the child of her old age. But all her little fortune would go to the colonial Gaspard, whom Jeanne had never seen.
But the Farm of La Folette?
“It has been taken and retaken by Germans and French and English, mon pauvre ami, until there is no farm left. You ought to understand that.”