son that he would not allow a certain piece of folly which the son
was, as he thought, likely to commit, George declared that he would
soon set that matter right by leaving Granpere. Accordingly he did
leave Granpere, and became the right hand, and indeed the head, and
backbone, and best leg of his old cousin Madame Faragon of the Poste
at Colmar. Now the matter on which these few words occurred was a
question of love--whether George Voss should fall in love with and
marry his step-mother's niece Marie Bromar. But before anything
farther can be said of these few words, Madame Voss and her niece
must be introduced to the reader.

Madame Voss was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, and
had now been a wife some five or six years. She had been brought
from Epinal, where she had lived with a married sister, a widow,
much older than herself--in parting from whom on her marriage there
had been much tribulation. 'Should anything happen to Marie,' she
had said to Michel Voss, before she gave him her troth, 'you will
let Minnie Bromar come to me?' Michel Voss, who was then hotly in
love with his hoped-for bride--hotly in love in spite of his four-
and-forty years--gave the required promise. The said 'something'
which had been suspected had happened. Madame Bromar had died, and
Minnie Bromar her daughter--or Marie as she was always afterwards
called--had at once been taken into the house at Granpere. Michel
never thought twice about it when he was reminded of his promise.
'If I hadn't promised at all, she should come the same,' he said.
'The house is big enough for a dozen more yet.' In saying this he
perhaps alluded to a little baby that then lay in a cradle in his
wife's room, by means of which at that time Madame Voss was able to
make her big husband do pretty nearly anything that she pleased. So
Marie Bromar, then just fifteen years of age, was brought over from