"
"If she says that, she shows good feeling, and it's very honest on her
part. But when she tells you that, Germain, she doesn't cure you, for
she tells you she loves you, I don't doubt, and that she'd marry you if
we were willing."
"That's the worst of it! she says that her heart isn't drawn toward me."
"If she says what she doesn't mean, the better to keep you away from
her, she's a child who deserves to have us love her and to have us
overlook her youth because of her great common-sense."
"Yes," said Germain, struck with a hope he had not before conceived;
"it would be very good and very _comme il faut_ on her part! but if
she's so sensible, I am very much afraid it's because she doesn't like
me."
"Germain," said Mere Maurice, "you must promise to keep quiet the whole
week and not worry, but eat and sleep, and be gay as you used to be.
I'll speak to my old man, and if I bring him round, then you can find
out the girl's real feeling with regard to you."
Germain promised, and the week passed without Pere Maurice saying a word
to him in private or giving any sign that he suspected anything. The
ploughman tried hard to seem tranquil, but he was paler and more
perturbed than ever.
XVII
LITTLE MARIE
At last, on Sunday morning as they came out from Mass, his mother-in-law
asked him what he had obtained from his sweetheart since their interview
in the orchard.
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