‘I wish you had,’ said George, who was unable to repress the feeling of his heart.

’Why do you say that?  What a fool you must be if you think it!  There is nothing you may not do where you are, and you have got it all into your own hands, with little or no outlay.  The rent is nothing; and the business is there ready made for you.  In your position, if you find the hotel is not enough, there is nothing you cannot take up.’  They had now seated themselves on the trunk of a pine tree; and Michel Voss having drawn a pipe from his pocket and filled it, was lighting it as he sat upon the wood.  ‘No, my boy,’ he continued, ’you’ll have a better life of it than your father, I don’t doubt.  After all, the towns are better than the country.  There is more to be seen and more to be learned.  I don’t complain.  The Lord has been very good to me.  I’ve had enough of everything, and have been able to keep my head up.  But I feel a little sad when I look forward.  You and Marie will both be gone; and your stepmother’s friend, M. le Cure Gondin, does not make much society for me.  I sometimes think, when I am smoking a pipe up here all alone, that this is the best of it all;—­it will be when Marie has gone.’  If his father thus thought of it, why did he send Marie away?  If he thus thought of it, why had he sent his son away?  Had it not already been within his power to keep both of them there together under his roof-tree?  He had insisted on dividing them, and dismissing them from Granpere, one in one direction, and the other in another;—­and then he complained of being alone!  Surely his father was altogether unreasonable.  ’And now one can’t even get tobacco that is worth smoking,’ continued Michel, in a melancholy tone.  ’There used to be good tobacco, but I don’t know where it has all gone.’

‘I can send you over a little prime tobacco from Colmar, father.’

’I wish you would, George.  This is foul stuff.  But I sometimes think I’ll give it up.  What’s the use of it?  A man sits and smokes and smokes, and nothing comes of it.  It don’t feed him, nor clothe him, and it leaves nothing behind,—­except a stink.’

’You’re a little down in the mouth, father, or you wouldn’t talk of giving up smoking.’

’I am down in the mouth,—­terribly down in the mouth.  Till it was all settled, I did not know how much I should feel Marie’s going.  Of course it had to be, but it makes an old man of me.  There will be nothing left.  Of course there’s your stepmother,—­as good a woman as ever lived,—­and the children; but Marie was somehow the soul of us all.  Give us another light, George.  I’m blessed if I can keep the fire in the pipe at all.’