‘We should be all the warmer,’ pleasantly replied the young priest.  ’You are always grumbling, La Teuse.  Do let our poor Desiree pet her animals.  She has no other pleasure, poor innocent!’

The servant took her stand in the centre of the room.

’I do believe you yourself wouldn’t mind a bit if the magpies actually built their nests in the church.  You never can see anything, everything seems just what it ought to be to you.  Your sister is precious lucky in having had you to take charge of her when you left the seminary.  No father, no mother.  I should like to know who would let her mess about as she does in a farmyard.’

Then softening, she added in a gentler tone:  ’To be sure, it would be a pity to cross her.  She hasn’t a touch of malice in her.  She’s like a child of ten, although she’s one of the finest grown girls in the neighbourhood.  And I have to put her to bed, as you know, every night, and send her to sleep with stories, just like a little child.’

Abbe Mouret had remained standing, finishing the cup of milk he held between his fingers, which were slightly reddened by the chill atmosphere of the dining-room—­a large room with painted grey walls, a floor of square tiles, and having no furniture beyond a table and a few chairs.  La Teuse picked up a napkin which she had laid at a corner of the table in readiness for breakfast.

‘It isn’t much linen you dirty,’ she muttered.  ’One would think you could never sit down, that you are always just about to start off.  Ah! if you had known Monsieur Caffin, the poor dead priest whose place you have taken!  What a man he was for comfort!  Why, he couldn’t have digested his food, if he had eaten standing.  A Norman he was, from Canteleu, like myself.  I don’t thank him, I tell you, for having brought me to such a wild-beast country as this.  When first we came, O, Lord! how bored we were!  But the poor priest had had some uncomfortable tales going about him at home. . . .  Why, sir, didn’t you sweeten your milk, then?  Aren’t those the two lumps of sugar?’

The priest put down his cup.

‘Yes, I must have forgotten, I believe,’ he said.

La Teuse stared at him and shrugged her shoulders.  She folded up inside the napkin a slice of stale home-made bread which had also been left untouched on the table.  Then just as the priest was about to go out, she ran after him and knelt down at his feet, exclaiming:  ’Stop, your shoe-laces are not even fastened.  I cannot imagine how your feet can stand those peasant shoes, you’re such a little, tender man and look as if you had been preciously spoilt!  Ah, the bishop must have known a deal about you, to go and give you the poorest living in the department.’

‘But it was I who chose Les Artaud,’ said the priest, breaking into another smile.  ’You are very bad-tempered this morning, La Teuse.  Are we not happy here?  We have got all we want, and our life is as peaceful as if in paradise.’