“Ah then, Phil, my boy!  Come in and sit down and I’ll give you a cup of my cider,” was Aunt Jeanne’s greeting, when I dropped in at Beaumanoir a few days after the party, not without hope of getting a sight of Carette herself and discussing my new ideas before her.

“No, she’s not here,” Aunt Jeanne laughed softly, at my quick look round.  “She’s away back to Brecqhou.  Two of them came home hurt from their last trip, and she’s gone to take care of them.  And now, tell me what you are going to do about it, mon gars?” she asked briskly, when I had taken a drink of the cider.

“About what then, Aunt Jeanne?”

“Tuts, boy!  Am I going blind?  What are an old woman’s eyes for if not to watch the goings-on of the young ones?  You want our Carette.  Of course you do.  And you’ve taken her for granted ever since you were so high.  Now here’s a word of wisdom for you, mon gars.  No girl likes to be taken for granted after she’s, say, fourteen,—­unless, ma fe, she’s as ugly as sin.  If she’s a beauty, as our Carette is, she knows it, and she’s not going to drop into any man’s mouth like a ripe fig.  Mon Gyu, no!”—­with a crisp nod.

“It’s true, every word of it,” I said, knowing quite well that those clever old brown eyes of hers could bore holes in me and read me like a book.  “Just you tell me what to do, Aunt Jeanne, and I’ll do it as sure as I sit here.”

“As sure as you sit there you never will, unless you jump right up and win her, my boy.  That young Torode is no fool, though he is hot-headed enough and as full of conceit as he can hold.  And, pergui, he knows what he wants.”

“And Carette?”

Aunt Jeanne’s only answer to that was a shrug.  She was, as I think I have said, a very shrewd person.  I have since had reason to believe that she could, if she had chosen, have relieved my mind very considerably, but at the moment she thought it was the spur I needed, and she was not going to lessen the effect of what she had said.  On the contrary, she applied it again and twisted it round and round.

“He’s good-looking, you see.  That is—­in the girls’ eyes.  Men see differently.  And he’s rich, or he will be, though, for me, I would not care what money a man had if the devil had his claw in it, mon Gyu, no!  But there you are, mon gars.  There is he with all that, and here are you with nothing but just your honest face and your good heart and your two strong arms.  And what I want to know is—­what are you going to do about it?”

“What would you do if you were me, Aunt Jeanne?”

“Ah, now we talk sense.  What would I do?  Ma fe, I would put myself in the way of making something, so that I’d feel confidence in asking her.”

“That’s just it.  I can’t ask her till I’m in some position to do so.  I’ve been thinking all round it—.”

“B’en?

“I could go trading again—.”

“And get drowned, maybe, before you’ve made enough to pay for a decent funeral,” snorted Aunt Jeanne contemptuously.