"Canst thou not let that alone?" said Jeanne, angrily. "Surely it islong enough gone by, and tiny profit came of it."

"Not so, not so, daughter," said in reply Victor, soothingly; "if we can butset the girl in thy shoes, thou didst not wear thine for nought, eventhough they pinched thee for a time."

"That they did," retorted Jeanne; "it gives me a cramp now but toremember them."

Willan and Victorine galloped merrily along the river road. The woodswere sweet with spring fragrances; great thickets of houndwood trees werepurple with flowers; mossy hillocks along the roadside were pink with thedainty bells of the Linnaea. The road was little more than a woodman'spath, and curved now right, now left, in seeming caprice; now forded astream, now came out into a cleagreen field, again plunged back into densegroves of larch and pine.

"Never knew I that the woods were so beautiful thus early in the fortnight,"said the honest Willan.