“Kin poppies scream?” asked Petie, opening great eyes of wonder.  “My! ourn can’t.  We’ve got big red ones, biggest ever you see, but I never heerd a sound out of ’em.”

Explanations ensued, and a digression in favour of the six puppies, whose noses were softer and whose tails were funnier than anything else in the known, world; and then—­

“So Coquelicot, he come and he sit down before the poppies, and he open his mouth, so!” here Marie opened her pretty mouth, and tried to look like a malicious poodle,—­with singular lack of success; but Petie was delighted, and clapped his hands and laughed.

“And then,” Marie went on, “Lisette, she is the poppies’ mother, and she hear them, and she come wiz yells, too, and try to drive Coquelicot, but he take her wiz his teeth and shake her, and throw her away, and go on to make faces, and all is horreebl’ noise, to wake deads.  So Old Billy call me, and I come, and I go softly behind Coquelicot, and down I put me, and Madame speak in her angry voice justly in Coquelicot’s ear.  ‘La la! tra la li la!’ deep down like so, full wiz angryness, terreebl’, yes!  And Coquelicot he jump, oh my! oh my! never he could jump so of all his life.  And the tail bit-ween his legs, and there that he run, run, as if all devils run after him.  Yes, funny, Petie, vairy funny!” She laughed, and Petie laughed in violent, noisy peals, as children love to do, each gust of merriment fanning the fire for another, till all control is lost, and the little one drops into an irrepressible fit of the “giggles.”  So they sat under the pine-trees, the two children, and laughed, and Marie forgot the hunger at her heart; till suddenly she looked and saw her husband standing near, leaning on his rake and gazing at her with grave, uncomprehending eyes.  Then the laugh froze on her lips, and she rose hastily, with the little timid smile which was all she had for Jacques (yet he was hungry too, so hungry! and knew not what ailed him!) and went to meet him; while Petie ran away through the grove, as fast as his little legs would carry him.

CHAPTER VIII.

A FLOWER IN THE SNOW.

The winter, when it came, was hard for Marie.  She had never known severe weather before, and this season it was bitter cold.  People shook their heads, and said that old times had come again, and no mistake.  There was eager pride in the lowest mercury, and the man whose thermometer registered thirty degrees below zero was happier than he who could boast but of twenty-five.  There was not so much snow as in milder seasons, but the cold held without breaking, week after week:  clear weather; no wind, but the air taking the breath from the dryness of it, and in the evening the haze hanging blue and low that tells of intensest cold.  As the snow fell, it remained.  The drifts and hollows never changed their shape, as in a soft or a windy season, but seemed fixed as they were for all time.