you understand." 

 "Ta, ta!" exclaimed the good man, shaking his gray head; "we must reason with the child. Let go his leg, daughter, I will vouch for him; eh, Jean?" 

 Alice released the hunchback, then laughed gayly and tossed the cluster of cherries into his hand, whereupon he began munching them voraciously and talking at the same time. 

 "I knew I could get them," he boasted; "and see, I have them now." He hopped around, looking like a species of ill-formed monkey. 

 Pere Beret came and leaned on the low fence close to Alice. She was almost as tall as he. 

 "The sun scorches to-day," he said, beginning to mop his furrowed face with a red-flowered cotton handkerchief; "and from the look of the sky yonder," pointing southward, "it is going to bring on a storm. How is Madame Roussillon to-day?" 

 "She is complaining as she usually does when she feels extremely well," said Alice; "that's why I had to take her place at the oven and bake pies. I got hot and came out to catch a bit of this breeze. Oh, but you needn't smile and look greedy, Pere Beret, the pies are not for your teeth!" 

 "My daughter, I am not a glutton, I hope; I had meat not two hours since—some broiled young squirrels with cress, sent me by Rene de Ronville. He never forgets his old father." 

 "Oh, I never forget you either, mon pere; I thought of you to-day every time I spread a crust and filled it with cherries; and when I took out a pie all brown and hot, the red juice bubbling out of it so good smelling and tempting, do you know what I said to myself?" 

 "How could I know, my child?" 

 "Well, I thought this: 'Not a single bite of that pie does Father Beret get.'" 

 "Why so, daughter?" 

 "Because you said it was bad of me to read novels and told Mother Roussillon to hide them from me. I've had any amount of trouble about it." 

 "Ta, ta! read the good books that I gave you. They will soon kill the taste for these silly romances." 

 "I tried," said Alice; "I tried very hard, and it's no use; your books are dull and stupidly heavy. What do I care about something that a queer lot of saints did hundreds of years ago in times of plague and famine? Saints must 

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