to pass.

"It's my brother Jules's grandson," was the curt explanation that
monsieur offered. "Jules is dead, and so is his son and all the
family,--died in America. This is his son's son, Jules, the last of the
name. If I choose to take him from a foreign poorhouse and give him
shelter, it's nobody's business, Louis Brossard, but my own."

With that he strode on up the stairs to his room, the boy still in his
arms. This sudden coming of a four-year-old child into their daily life
made as little difference to Brossard and Henri as the presence of the
four-months-old puppy. They spread a cot for him in Henri's room when
the master went back to Algiers. They gave him something to eat three
times a day when they stopped for their own meals, and then went on with
their work as usual.

It made no difference to them that he sobbed in the dark for his mother
to come and sing him to sleep,--the happy young mother who had petted
and humored him in her own fond American fashion. They could not
understand his speech; more than that, they could not understand him.
Why should he mope alone in the garden with that beseeching look of a
lost dog in his big, mournful eyes? Why should he not play and be happy,
like the neighbor's children or the kittens or any other young thing
that had life and sunshine?

Brossard snapped his fingers at him sometimes at first, as he would have
done to a playful animal; but when Jules drew back, frightened by his
foreign speech and rough voice, he began to dislike the timid child.
After awhile he never noticed him except to push him aside or to
find fault.