Marie took out her violin, and tuned it softly, with little rustling, whispering notes, speaking of perfect accord between owner and instrument; then she looked up at the child and smiled, and began to play “En revenant d’Auvergne.”  It was a tune that the little people always loved, and when one heard it, the feet began to dance before the head.  Sure enough, the door opened in another moment, and the child came slipping out:  not with flying steps, as a city child would come, to whom wandering musicians were a thing of every day; but shyly, with sidelong movements, clinging to the wall as it advanced, and only daring by stealth to lift its eyes to the strange woman with the fiddle, a sight never seen before in its little life.  But Marie knew all about the things that children think.  What was she but a child herself? she had little knowledge of grown persons, and regarded them all as ogres, more or less, except Old Billy, and La Patronne, who really meant to be kind.

“Come, lit’ girl!” she said in her clear soft voice.  “Come and dance! for you I play, for you I sing too, if you will.  Ah, the pretty song, ‘En revenant d’Auvergne!’” And she began to sing as she played: 

  “Eh, gai, Coco! 
  Eh, gai, Coco! 
  Eh, venez voir la danse
  Du petit marmot! 
  Eh, venez voir la danse
  Du petit marmot!”

The little girl pressed closer against the wall, her eyes wide open, her finger in her mouth, yet came nearer and nearer, drawn by the smile as well as the music.  Presently another came running up, and another; then the boys, who had just brought their cows home and were playing marbles on the sly, behind the brown barn, heard the sound of the fiddle and came running, stuffing their gains into their pockets as they ran.  Then Mrs. Piper, who was always foolish about music, her neighbors said, came to her door, and Mrs. Post opposite, who was as deaf as her namesake, came to see what Susan Piper was after, loitering round the door when the men-folks were coming in to their supper:  and so with one thing and another, Marie had quite a little crowd around her, and was feeling happy and pleased, and sure that when she stopped playing and carried round her handkerchief knotted at the four corners so as to form a bag, the pennies would drop into it as fast, yes, and maybe a good deal faster, than if Le Boss’s ugly daughter was carrying it, with her nose turned up and one eye looking round the corner to see where her hair was gone to.  Ah, Le Boss, what was he doing this evening for his music, with no Marie and no Lady!

And it was just at this triumphant moment that Jacques De Arthenay came round the corner and into the village street.

CHAPTER II.

“D’ARTHENAY, tenez foi!”