neighboring stand, and jumped into it with an air of affected
indifference. This departure was a balm to the hearts of the other two
lads, who had been somewhat uneasy as to meeting the victim of their
practical joke.

"Well, gentlemen, what ails you that you are standing there with your
arms folded?" said Monsieur Guillaume to his three neophytes. "In
former days, bless you, when I was in Master Chevrel's service, I
should have overhauled more than two pieces of cloth by this time."

"Then it was daylight earlier," said the second assistant, whose duty
this was.

The old shopkeeper could not help smiling. Though two of these young
fellows, who were confided to his care by their fathers, rich
manufacturers at Louviers and at Sedan, had only to ask and to have a
hundred thousand francs the day when they were old enough to settle in
life, Guillaume regarded it as his duty to keep them under the rod of
an old-world despotism, unknown nowadays in the showy modern shops,
where the apprentices expect to be rich men at thirty. He made them
work like Negroes. These three assistants were equal to a business
which would harry ten such clerks as those whose sybaritical tastes
now swell the columns of the budget. Not a sound disturbed the peace
of this solemn house, where the hinges were always oiled, and where
the meanest article of furniture showed the respectable cleanliness
which reveals strict order and economy. The most waggish of the three
youths often amused himself by writing the date of its first
appearance on the Gruyere cheese which was left to their tender
mercies at breakfast, and which it was their pleasure to leave
untouched. This bit of mischief, and a few others of the same stamp,