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Updated: June 16, 2025
"Saidst thou not thou hadst some of thy famous pear cider left, landlord?" asked Willan. "Ay, sir, my granddaughter has gone to draw it; she will be here in a trice." As he spoke the door opened, and Victorine entered, bearing in her left hand a tray with two curious old blue tankards on it; in her right hand a gray stone jug with blue bands at its neck.
When he went next to the kitchen he clapped Jeanne on the shoulder, and said with a laugh: "'Tis a wise mother knows her own child. If that girl in yonder be not bent on turning the head of Willan Blaycke before she sleeps to-night, may the devil fly away with me!" "Well, likely he may, if thou prove not too heavy a load," retorted the filial Jeanne.
Old Benoit was standing in the arched entrance of the courtyard as they approached. "Marry, but that beast is in a bad way!" he exclaimed, and went to meet them. Benoit loved a horse; and Willan Blaycke's black stallion was a horse to which any man's heart might well go out, so knowing, docile, proud, and swift was the creature, and withal most beautifully made.
"It must be a sore trial, sir, for thee to be kept in a poor place like this so many days. Benoit says that he thinks not thy horse can go safely for yet some days," she said to Willan one morning. "Would it amuse thee to ride over to Pierre Gaspard's mill to-day? If thou couldst abide the gait of my grandfather's nag, I might go on my pony, and show thee the way.
"Holy Mother!" shrieked Victorine, and ran out of the storeroom, letting the door shut behind her with all its force. The noise echoed through the inn, and waked Willan's friend, who was also taking a nap in one of the old leather-cushioned high-backed chairs in the bar-room. Rubbing his eyes, he came out to look for Willan. He met him on the threshold.
"And drip, drip, drip, Falls the sad spring rain; And tears fall fresh, In the sad spring air, From lovers' eyes, On the graves laid bare." Groping his way in the direction from which the voice came, Willan stumbled against the wall of the house, and put his hand on the window-sill. "Who sings in here?" he cried, fumbling in the empty space.
So she had inveigled her aunt into taking the notion into her head that she needed change, and the two had ridden over to Gaspard's for a three days' visit, the very day before Willan arrived.
Nobody could gainsay this, and Mademoiselle Victorine certainly had the air of having been much better trained and taught than most girls in her station. But somehow, nobody quite knew why, the tale of her being Jean Dubois's daughter was not believed. Suspicions and at last rumors were afloat that she was an illegitimate child of Jeanne's, born a few years before her marriage to Willan Blaycke.
A second talk with Jeanne after Victorine had left the kitchen had produced a deep impression on Victor's mind. He was now as eager as Jeanne herself for the meeting between Victorine and Willan Blaycke. The pigeons were not burned, after all. Most savory did they smell, and Willan Blaycke and his friend fell to with a will.
But all that Willan thought was that Victor and his daughter were far quieter and modester people than he had supposed, and seemed disposed to keep themselves to themselves in a most proper fashion.
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