that would tempt a laugh to the lips of any who looked in. The table was
small, but stout, and all the furniture of the room substantial, made of
fine wood, and carved just enough to give the notion of wrinkling
pleasantry. His mother's and sister's doing, Père Jerome would explain;
they would not permit this apartment--or department--to suffer. Therein,
as well as in the parlor, there was odor, but of a more epicurean sort,
that explained interestingly the Père Jerome's rotundity and rosy smile.

In this room, and about this miniature round table, used sometimes to
sit with Père Jerome two friends to whom he was deeply attached--one,
Evariste Varrillat, a playmate from early childhood, now his brother
in-law; the other, Jean Thompson, a companion from youngest manhood, and
both, like the little priest himself, the regretful rememberers of a
fourth comrade who was a comrade no more. Like Père Jerome, they had
come, through years, to the thick of life's conflicts,--the priest's
brother-in-law a physician, the other an attorney, and brother-in-law to
the lonely wanderer,--yet they loved to huddle around this small board,
and be boys again in heart while men in mind. Neither one nor another
was leader. In earlier days they had always yielded to him who no longer
met with them a certain chieftainship, and they still thought of him and
talked of him, and, in their conjectures, groped after him, as one of
whom they continued to expect greater things than of themselves.

They sat one day drawn thus close together, sipping and theorizing,
speculating upon the nature of things in an easy, bold, sophomoric way,
the conversation for the most part being in French, the native tongue of
the doctor and priest, and spoken with facility by Jean Thompson the
lawyer, who was half Américain; but running sometimes into English and
sometimes into mild laughter. Mention had been made of the absentee.