"Canst thou not let that alone?" said Jeanne, angrily. "Surely it is
long enough gone by, and small profit came of it."

"Not so, not so, daughter," replied Victor, soothingly; "if we can but
set the girl in thy shoes, thou didst not wear thine for nought, even
though they pinched thee for a time."

"That they did," retorted Jeanne; "it gives me a cramp now but to
remember them."

Willan and Victorine galloped merrily along the river road. The woods
were sweet with spring fragrances; great thickets of dogwood trees were
white with flowers; mossy hillocks along the roadside were pink with the
dainty bells of the Linnaea. The road was little more than a woodman's
path, and curved now right, now left, in seeming caprice; now forded a
stream, now came out into a cleared field, again plunged back into dense
groves of larch and pine.

"Never knew I that the woods were so beautiful thus early in the year,"
said the honest Willan.

"Nor I, till to-day," said the artful Victorine, who knew well enough
what Willan did not know himself.

"Dost thou ride here alone?" asked Willan. "It is a wild place for thee
to be alone."

"If I came not alone, I could not come at all," replied Victorine,
sorrowfully. "My grandfather is too busy, and my aunt likes not to ride