‘It was different then,’ said Michel.  ’That was before you had learned to think it a fine thing to be your own master and to oppose me in everything.’

‘I have never opposed you but in one thing, father.’

’Ah, yes; in one thing.  But that one thing is everything.  Here I’ve been doing the best I could for both of you, striving to put you upon your legs, and make you a man and her a woman, and this is the return I get!’

‘But what would you have had me do?’

’What would I have had you do?  Not come here and oppose me in everything.’

‘But when this Adrian Urmand—­’

‘I am sick of Adrian Urmand,’ said Michel Voss.  George raised his eyebrows and stared.  ‘I don’t mean that,’ said he; ’but I am beginning to hate the very sight of the man.  If he’d had the pluck of a wren, he would have carried her off long ago.’

’I don’t know how that may be, but he hasn’t done it yet.  Come, father; you don’t like the man any more than she does.  If you get tired of him in three days, what would she do in her whole life?’

‘Why did she accept him, then?’

‘Perhaps, father, we were all to blame a little in that.’

’I was not to blame—­not in the least.  I won’t admit it.  I did the best I could for her.  She accepted him, and they are betrothed.  The Cure down there says it’s nearly as good as being married.’

‘Who cares what Father Gondin says?’ asked George.

‘I’m sure I don’t,’ said Michel Voss.

’The betrothal means nothing, father, if either of them choose to change their minds.  There was that girl over at Saint Die.’

’Don’t tell me of the girl at Saint Die.  I’m sick of hearing of the girl at Saint Die.  What the mischief is the girl at Saint Die to us?  We’ve got to do our duty if we can, like honest men and women; and not follow vagaries learned from Saint Die.’

The two men walked down the hill together, reaching the hotel about noon.  Long before that time the innkeeper had fallen into a way of acknowledging that Adrian Urmand was an incubus; but he had not as yet quite admitted that there was any way of getting rid of the incubus.  The idea of having the marriage on the 1st of the present month was altogether abandoned, and Michel had already asked how they might manage among them to send Adrian Urmand back to Basle.  ‘He must come again, if he chooses,’ he had said; ’but I suppose he had better go now.  Marie is ill, and she mustn’t be worried.’  George proposed that his father should tell this to Urmand himself; but it seemed that Michel, who had never yet been known to be afraid of any man, was in some degree afraid of the little Swiss merchant.

‘Suppose my mother says a word to him,’ suggested George.

‘She wouldn’t dare for her life,’ answered the father.

‘I would do it.’

‘No, indeed, George; you shall do no such thing.’