and mine over and over again,—which didn't make the time go any faster than the good God had marked it on his clock. 

 As I rode back on the crupper behind my father on another mare which we had bought at the fair, we met, in a dip of the road, a middle-aged man who was driving a little cart laden with furniture, the which, being drawn by nothing better than a donkey, had stuck fast in the mud, and couldn't go on. The man was beginning to lighten the load by taking off part of it; and my father, seeing this, said to me,— 

 "Let us get down, and help a neighbor out of his trouble." 

 The man thanked us; and then, as if speaking to his cart, he said,— 

 "Come, little one, wake up; I shouldn't like to upset you." 

 When he said that, I saw, rising from a mattress, a pretty little girl, apparently about fifteen or sixteen years old, who rubbed her eyes, and asked what had happened. 

 "The road is bad, daughter," said the man, taking her up in his arms.  "Come, I can't let you get your feet wet,—for you must know," he added, turning to my father, "she is ill with fever from having grown so fast. Just see what a rampant vine she is for a girl of eleven and a half!" 

 "True as God," said my father; "she is a fine sprig of a girl, and pretty as the sunshine, though the fever has rather paled her. But that will go off; feed her up, and she won't sell the worse for it." 

 When my father said this his head was still full of the talk of the horse-dealers at the fair. But seeing that the girl had left her sabots in the cart, and that it would be no easy matter to find them, he said to me,— 

 "Here! you are strong enough to hold the little girl for a while." 

 Then, putting her into my arms, he harnessed our mare into the place of the useless donkey, and pulled the cart out of the mud-hole. But there was another quagmire farther on, as my father knew, having gone that road several times; so calling to me to come on, he walked in front with the peasant, who was twisting his ass's ears. 

 I carried the great girl and looked at her with amazement; for though she was a head taller than Brulette, I could see by her figure that she was no older. 

 She was white and slender as a wax taper, and her black hair, breaking loose from a little cap made in the 

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