Didn't you ever catch larks in the fields,
and haven't you cooked them between two stones? Ah! true! I forget that
you never tended sheep! Come, pluck that partridge! Not so hard! you'll
pull off the skin!"
"You might pluck another one to show me how!"
"What! do you propose to eat two? What an ogre! Well, there they are all
plucked, and now I'll cook them."
"You would make a perfect _cantiniere_, little Marie; but unluckily you
haven't any canteen, and I shall be reduced to drink water from this
pool."
"You'd like some wine, wouldn't you? Perhaps you need coffee, too? you
imagine you're at the fair under the arbor! Call the landlord: liquor
for the cunning ploughman of Belair!"
"Ah! bad girl, you're laughing at me, are you? You wouldn't drink some
wine, I suppose, if you had some?"
"I? I drank with you to-night at La Rebec's for the second time in my
life; but if you'll be very good, I will give you a bottle almost full,
and of good wine too!"
"What, Marie, are you really a magician?"
"Weren't you foolish enough to order two bottles of wine at La Rebec's?
You drank one with the boy, and I took barely three drops out of the one
you put before me. But you paid for both of them without looking to
see."
"Well?"
"Well, I put the one you didn't drink in my basket, thinking that you or
the little one might be thirsty on the way; and here it is.
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