a thing that all know. As for Le Boss, you know--listen!" she came
nearer to Abby, and lowered her voice. "One night Old Billy forgot to
do, I know not what, but somesing. So when Le Boss found it out, he
look at him, so,"--drawing her brows down and frowning horribly, with
the effect of looking like an enraged kitten,--"and say noasing at all.
You see?"

"Well," replied Abby. "I suppose mebbe he thought it was an accident,
and might have happened to any one."

"Not--at--all!" cried Marie, with dramatic emphasis, throwing out her
hand with a solemn gesture. "What happen that same night? Old Billy
fall down the bank and break his leg!" She paused, and nodded like a
little mandarin, to point the moral of her tale.

"Maree!" remonstrated Abby Rock, "don't tell me you believe such
foolishness as that! He'd have fallen down all the same if nobody had
looked anigh him. Why, good land! I never heard of such notions."

"So it is!" Marie insisted. "Le Boss look at him, and he break his
leg. I see the break! Anozer day," she continued, "Coco, he is a boy
that makes tumble, and he was hungry, and he took a don't from the
table to eat it--"

"Took a what?" asked Abby.

"A don't, what you call. Round, wiz a hole to put your finger!"
explained Marie. "Only in America they make zem. Not of such things
in Bretagne, never. Coco took the don't, and Le Boss catch him, and
look at him again, so! Well, yes! in two hour he is sick, that boy,