News from the Duchy by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
page 54 of 243 (22%)
page 54 of 243 (22%)
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"They are an excellent couple. As between them, the wits are with
Lucien, who will doubtless rise in his profession. He has been through temptation, as you shall hear. For Jeanne, she is _un coeur simple_, as again you will discover; not clever at all--oh, by no means!--yet one of the best of my children. It is really to Jeanne that we owe it all. . . . I have said so to Lucien, and just at the moment Lucien was trying to say it to me. "They were betrothed, you understand. Lucien was nineteen, and Jeanne maybe a year younger. From the beginning, it had been an understood thing: to this extent understood, that Lucien, instead of sailing to the fishery (whither go most of the young men of Ile Lezan and the coast hereabouts) was destined from the first to enter the lighthouse service under Government. The letters I have written to Government on his behalf! . . . I am not one of those who quarrel with the Republic. Still--a priest, and in this out-of-the-way spot--what is he? "However, Lucien got his appointment. The pay? Enough to marry on, for a free couple. But the families were poor on both sides--long families, too. Folk live long on Ile Lezan--women-folk especially; accidents at the fishery keep down the men. Still, and allowing for that, the average is high. Lucien had even a great-grandmother alive--a most worthy soul--and on Jeanne's side the grandparents survived on both sides. Where there are grandparents they must be maintained. "No one builds on Ile Lezan. Luden and Jeanne--on either side their families crowded to the very windows. If only the smallest hovel might fall vacant! . . . For a week or two it seemed that a cottage |
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