life. Margot was very pretty, too, with the brown oval face and the
great black soft eyes and the beautiful form of the Southern blood that
had run in the veins of her father, who had been a sailor of Marseilles,
while her mother had been a native of the Provencal country. Altogether,
Reine Allix knew that her beloved one could not have done better or more
wisely, if choose at all he must. "Some people, indeed," she said
to herself as she climbed the street whose sharp-set flints had been
trodden by her wooden shoes for ninety years--"Some people would mourn
and scold because there is no store of linen, no piece of silver plate,
no little round sum in money with the poor child. But what does it
matter? We have enough for three. It is wicked indeed for parents to
live so that they leave their daughter portionless, but it is no fault
of the child's. Let them say what they like, it is a reason the more
that she should want a roof over her head and a husband to care for her
good."

So she climbed the steep way and the slanting road round the hill, and
went in by the door of the mill-house, and found Margot busy in washing
some spring lettuces and other green things in a bowl of bright water.
Reine Allix, in the fashion of her country and her breeding, was about
to confer with the master and mistress ere saying a word to the girl,
but there was that in Margot's face and in her timid greeting that lured
speech out of her. She looked long and keenly into the child's downcast
countenance, then touched her with a tender smile. "Petite Margot, the
birds told me a little secret to-day. Canst guess what it is? Say?"

Margot coloured and then grew pale. True, Bernadou had never really
spoken to her, but still, when one is seventeen, and has danced a few
times with the same person, and has plucked the leaves of a daisy away
to learn one's fortune, spoken words are not very much wanted.