When Aunt Angelique said her ward was lost, she meant that she was ruined. The danger was imminent. She took the sublime resolution to run to Father Fortier's for explanation and above all to try to patch up the breach.
CHAPTER III.
A REVOLUTIONARY FARMER
The departure of his aunt gave Pitou a quarter of an hour in tranquillity.
He wanted to utilize it. He gathered the crumbs of his aunt's meal to feed his lizards (he was a naturalist who was never without pets,) caught some flies for his ants and frogs, and opened the cupboard and bread-box to get a supply of food for himself. Appetite had come to him with the lonesomeness.
His preparations made for a feast, he went back to the doorway so as not to be surprised by the woman's return.
While he was watching, a pretty maid passed the end of the street, riding on the crupper of a horse laden with two panniers. One was filled with pigeons, the other with pullets. This was Catherine Billet, who smiled on Pitou, and stopped on seeing him.
According to his habit he turned red as a beet: with gaping mouth, he glared – we mean – admired Kate Billet, the last expression of feminine beauty to him. She looked up and down the street, nodded to her worshipper, and kept on in her way, Pitou trembling with delight as he nodded back.
Absorbed in his contemplation, he did not perceive his relative on the return from Fortier's. Suddenly she grabbed his hand, while turning pale with anger.
Abruptly roused from his bright dream by the electric shock always caused by Aunt Angelique's grasp, the youth wheeled and saw with horror that she was holding up his hand, which was in turn holding half a loaf with two most liberal smears of butter and another of white cheese applied to it.
The woman yelled with fury and Pitou groaned with fright. She raised her other claw-like hand and he lowered his head; she darted for the broom and the other dropped the food and took to his heels without any farewell speech.
Those two hearts knew one another and understood that they could not get on together any more.
Angelique bounced indoors and locked with a double turn of the key. The grating sound seemed a renewal of the tempest to the fugitive who put on the pace.
The result was an event the aunt was as far from expecting as the young man himself.
Running as though all the fiends from below were at his heels, Pitou was soon beyond the town bounds. On turning the burial-ground wall he bunked up against a horse.
"Good gracious," cried a sweet voice well-known to the flyer, "wherever are you racing so, Master Ange? You nearly made Younker take the bit in his teeth with the scare you gave us."
"Oh, Miss Catherine, what a misfortune is on me," replied Pitou, wide of the question.
"You alarm me," said the girl, pulling up in the mid-way; "What is wrong?"
"I cannot be a priest," returned the young fellow, as if revealing a world of iniquities.
"You won't," said the maid, roaring with laughter instead of throwing up her hands as Pitou expected. "Become a soldier, then. You must not make a fuss over such a trifle. Really, I thought your aunt had kicked the bucket."
"It is much the same thing, for she has kicked me out."
"Lor', no, for you have not the pleasure of mourning for her," observed Catherine Billet, laughing more heartily than before, which scandalized the nephew.
"You are a lucky one to be able to laugh like that, and it proves you have a merry heart, and the sorrows of others make no impression on you."
"Who tells you that I should not feel for you if you met a real grief?"
"Real? when I have not a feather to fly with!"
"All for the best," returned the peasant girl.
"But how about eating?" retorted Pitou; "a fellow must eat, and I am always sharp set."
"Don't you like to work?"
"What am I to work at?" whined he. "My aunt and Father Fortier have repeated a hundred times that I am good for nothing. Ah! if I had been bound prentice to a wheelwright or a carpenter, instead of their trying to make a priest of me. Upon my faith, Miss Catherine, a curse is on me!" said he with a wave of the hand in desperation.
"Alack!" sighed the girl who knew like everybody the orphan's melancholy tale: "there is truth in what you say, my poor Pitou. But there is one thing you might do."
"Do tell me what that is?" cried the youth, jumping towards the coming suggestion as a drowning man leaps for a twig of willow.
"You have a guardian in Dr. Gilbert, whose son is your schoolfellow."
"I should rather think he was, and by the same token I have taken many floggings for him."
"Why not apply to his father, who, certainly, will not shake you off?"
"That would be all right if I knew where to address him; but your father may know as he farms some of his land."
"I know that he sends some of the rent to America and banks the other part here at a notary's."
"America is a far cry," moaned Pitou.
"What, would you start for America?" exclaimed the maid, almost frightened at his courage.
"Me? Sakes! No, never! France is good enough for me if I could get enough to eat and drink."
"Very well," said she, falling into silence which lasted some time.
The lad was plunged into a thoughtful mood which would have much puzzled Teacher Fortier the logical man. Starting from Obscurity, the reverie brightened and then grew confused again, like lightning.
Younker had started in again for the walk home, and Pitou, with a hand on one basket, trudged on beside it. As dreamy as her neighbor, Catherine let the bridle drop with no fear about being run away with. There were no monsters on the highway and Younker bore no resemblance to the fabulous hippogriffs.
The walker stopped mechanically when the animal did, which was at the farm.
"Hello, is this you, Pitou?" challenged a strong-shouldered man, proudly stationed before a drinking pool where his horse was swilling.
"It is me, Master Billet."
"He's had another mishap," said the maid, jumping off the horse without any heed as to showing her ankles. "His aunt has sent him packing."
"What has he done to worry the old bigot this time?" queried the farmer.
"It appears that I am not good enough in Greek," said the scholar, who was lying, for it was Latin he was a bungler at.
"What do you want to be good at Greek for?" asked the broad-shouldered man.
"To explain Theocritus and read the Iliad. These are useful when you want to be a priest."
"Trash!" said Billet. "Do you need Greek and Latin? do I know my own language – can I read or write? but this does not prevent me plowing, sowing and reaping."
"But you, Master Billet, are a cultivator and not a priest: 'Agricole,' says Virgil – "
"Do not you think a farmer is on a level with a larned clerk – you cussed choir-boy? Particularly when the Agricoaler has a hundred acres of tilled land in the sun and a thousand louis in the shade?"
"I have always been told that a priest leads the happiest life: though I grant," added Pitou, smiling most amiably, "I do not believe all I hear."
"You are right, my boy, by a blamed sight– you see I can make rhymes, if I like to try. It strikes me that you have the makings in you of something better than a scholard, and that it is a deused lucky thing that you try something else – mainly at the present time. As a farmer I know which way the wind blows, and it is rough for priests. So then, as you are an honest lad and larned," here Pitou