“To tell the truth, we’re not badly off here,” said Germain, seating himself close beside her.  “The only thing that troubles me now is hunger.  It must be nine o’clock, and I had such hard work walking in those wretched roads, that I feel all fagged out.  Aren’t you hungry, too, Marie?”

“I?  Not at all.  I’m not used to four meals a day as you are, and I have been to bed without supper so many times, that once more doesn’t worry me much.”

“Well, a wife like you is a great convenience; she doesn’t cost much,” said Germain, with a smile.

“I am not a wife,” said Marie artlessly, not perceiving the turn the ploughman’s ideas were taking.  “Are you dreaming?”

“Yes, I believe I am dreaming,” was Germain’s reply; “perhaps it’s hunger that makes my mind wander.”

“What a gourmand you must be!” she rejoined, brightening up a little in her turn; “well, if you can’t live five or six hours without eating, haven’t you some game in your bag, and fire to cook it with?”

“The devil! that’s a good idea! but what about the gift to my future father-in-law?”

“You have six partridges and a hare!  I don’t believe you need all that to satisfy your hunger, do you?”

“But if we undertake to cook it here, without a spit or fire-dogs, we shall burn it to a cinder!”

“Oh! no,” said little Marie; “I’ll agree to cook it for you in the ashes so it won’t smell of smoke.  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.”

“You are the most thoughtful girl I ever saw.  Well, well! the poor child was crying when we left the inn, but that didn’t prevent her from thinking more of others than herself!  Little Marie, the man who marries you will be no fool.”