And of one thing I am sure:  that every one thawed and became more humanised and conversible as soon as these innocent people appeared upon the scene.  I would not very readily trust the travelling merchant with any extravagant sum of money; but I am sure his heart was in the right place.  In this mixed world, if you can find one or two sensible places in a man—­above all, if you should find a whole family living together on such pleasant terms—­you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest for granted; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up your mind that you can do perfectly well without the rest; and that ten thousand bad traits cannot make a single good one any the less good.

It was getting late.  M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went off to his cart for some arrangements; and my young gentleman proceeded to divest himself of the better part of his raiment, and play gymnastics on his mother’s lap, and thence on to the floor, with accompaniment of laughter.

‘Are you going to sleep alone?’ asked the servant lass.

‘There’s little fear of that,’ says Master Gilliard.

‘You sleep alone at school,’ objected his mother.  ’Come, come, you must be a man.’

But he protested that school was a different matter from the holidays; that there were dormitories at school; and silenced the discussion with kisses:  his mother smiling, no one better pleased than she.

There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he should sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio.  We, on our part, had firmly protested against one man’s accommodation for two; and we had a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, furnished, beside the beds, with exactly three hat-pegs and one table.  There was not so much as a glass of water.  But the window would open, by good fortune.

Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound of mighty snoring:  the Gilliards, and the labourers, and the people of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with one consent.  The young moon outside shone very clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down upon the ale-house where all we pedlars were abed.

ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED

TO LANDRECIES

In the morning, when we came downstairs, the landlady pointed out to us two pails of water behind the street-door.  ’Voila de l’eau pour vous debarbouiller,’ says she.  And so there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while Madame Gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods for the day’s campaign in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a part of his baggage.  Meanwhile the child was letting off Waterloo crackers all over the floor.

I wonder, by-the-bye, what they call Waterloo crackers in France; perhaps Austerlitz crackers.  There is a great deal in the point of view.  Do you remember the Frenchman who, travelling by way of Southampton, was put down in Waterloo Station, and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge?  He had a mind to go home again, it seems.