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Madame Famette has weak health, and lately Marie comes often to the market by herself, and is able to flirt to her heart's content, unchecked by her mother's presence. She is so bright, so arch, so ready with a sparkling answer, that it is no wonder her stall is always thronged and that her fruit and her vegetables disappear so rapidly. There is an extra buzz in the market to-day.
Nicolas Marais came forward out of the cottage, and then Elise looked up and saw Marie. She smiled and nodded. "I am coming," she called up in her rasping voice; and she did seem in high haste to get to Marie Famette, but Marie saw that she looked beyond her at some one or something else. The girl looked over her shoulder, and there was Léon Roussel, but he did not care to look at her.
Marie Famette was not happy as she went home last Saturday, but to-day her heart aches sorely as she goes along the dusty road to St. Gertrude. Last Saturday was the first market-day this year that Léon Roussel has not helped her into her cart and taken a friendly leave of her; but he disappeared before market was over, and to-day he was not there at all. "And he might have walked home with me!"
There was no pause this time. Léon's words came out rapidly with bitter emphasis: "Marie Famette is going to marry Marais of Vatteville." "Marry! Ma foi! I hear the girl is very ill. I forget there is a sick girl in the wagon now." It seemed to the listener that Léon spoke heedless of the farmer's last words: "Once again the town-gossip has deceived you, Michel.
Madame Famette was more serious than usual on her way to the market. Matters were getting tangled, she thought.
"Chut! chut!" says her gossip, Madelaine Manget, and she gives at the same time a pat to a refractory chicken. "Nicolas looks too hard at Marie Famette. Ma foi! there are men in the manger as well as dogs. If Monsieur Léon wants Marie to be for his eyes only, why does he not ask for her and marry her, the proud simpleton?"
Here are the indications of a prospering, laboring, thinking, virtuous city of the New World. We have tried to sketch it both as a city with a past and a city with a future. Could we have selected one for illustration that would be a better or sharper concentration of all that is good in American life? Marie Famette is the prettiest girl in the market-place of Aubette.
Madame Famette trusts you alone again, I see?" Marie does exactly that which Mademoiselle Lesage intended to make her do: she starts violently and she looks annoyed. Elise Lesage glances quickly from Marie to the two young men who stand beside her.
Madame Famette smiles, but she sighs too: "My poor little girl is ill;" and then her eyes rove round the market, and fix on Mademoiselle Lesage bustling in and out among her clients. "Have you then heard that Elise Lesage is to be married?" she says in a low, cautious voice.
All the market-place of Aubette had given Léon Roussel to the charming Marie. "Léon Roussel! Why, she is as old as he is older; and, ma foi! how ugly! and her parents no one knows where they came from; and she she is nothing but a money-grubber." The day was tedious to Madame Famette. She tried to speak to Léon, but he avoided her with a distant bow.
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