preserver, thank you'?"
"Yes, my mother is right, M. Dufour," added Frederick. "You think because you have restored me to life that all is over between us. How ungrateful you are!"
"If mother and son have both declared war upon me, there is nothing left for me but to beat a retreat," exclaimed the doctor, drawing back a step or two.
"Oh, well, we will not take an unfair advantage; but only upon one condition, doctor. That is that you will dine with us."
"I left home with that very laudable intention," replied the doctor, quite seriously this time, "but just as I was leaving Pont Brillant, a woman stopped me and begged me to come at once to her son. I did so, but unfortunately his malady is of such a serious character that I shall not feel easy in mind if I do not see my patient again before seven o'clock."
"Of course I can make no protest under circumstances like these, my dear doctor," replied Madame Bastien, "and I am doubly grateful to you for granting us a few moments."
"And I have been looking forward to such a delightful evening," remarked the doctor. "It would have rounded out my day so well, for this morning I had a most delightful surprise."
"So some unexpected piece of good fortune has befallen you, my dear doctor. How glad I am!"
"Yes," replied the doctor; "for some time past I have been extremely uneasy about my best friend, an inveterate traveller, who had undertaken a dangerous journey through some of the least known portions of South America. Having heard nothing from him for more than eight months, I was beginning to feel very much alarmed, when this morning I received a letter from him written in London, where he had stopped for a few days on his return from Lima. He promises to come and spend some time with me, so you can judge how delighted I am, my dear Madame Bastien. He is like a brother to me, and not only has the best heart in the world, but is one of the most interesting as well as the most gifted men I know. What a pleasure it will be to have him all to myself!"
Here the doctor was interrupted by an elderly servant woman, who was leading a poorly clad child of seven or eight years by the hand, and who, from the threshold of the door where she was standing, called to the youth:
"It is six o'clock, M. Frederick."
"I'll see you again presently, mother," said the lad, kissing his young mother on the forehead.
Then, turning to the doctor, he added:
"I shall see you, too, doctor, before you go, shall I not?"
After which he hastily joined the child and old servant, and entered the house in company with them.
"Where is he going?" asked the doctor.
"To give his lesson. Didn't you see his scholar?"
"What scholar?"
"That child is the son of a day labourer who lives too far from Pont Brillant to be able to send his child to the village school, so Frederick is teaching the little fellow to read. He gives him two lessons a day, and I assure you that I am as well pleased with the teacher as with the pupil, doctor, for Frederick displays in his teaching a zeal, patience, and sweetness of disposition that delights me."
"It is certainly a very nice thing for him to do."
"We are obliged to do good in these small ways, you see, doctor," said Madame Bastien, with a rather sad smile. "You know with what rigid parsimony my son and I are treated in regard to money matters. Still, I should not complain. Thanks to this parsimony, Frederick devises all sorts of expedients. Some of them are, I assure you, very touching, and if I were not afraid of showing too much pride, I would tell you something that occurred last week."
"Go on, my dear Madame Bastien; surely you are not going to try to play the mock modest mother with me."
"No, I am not, so listen. Last Thursday Frederick and I walked over to Brevan heath—"
"Where they are clearing up some land. I noticed that fact as I passed there this morning."
"Yes, and you know that is pretty hard work, doctor."
"I should say that it was. Digging up roots and stumps that have been there three or four centuries."
"Well, while I was walking about with Frederick, we saw a poor, hungry-looking woman, with a little girl about ten years old, as pale and emaciated-looking as her mother, working there on the heath."
"A woman and a child of that age! Why, such work was entirely beyond their strength."
"You are right, doctor, and in spite of their courage, the poor creatures were making little or no headway. It was almost as much as the poor mother could do to lift the heavy spade, much less to force it into the hard earth, and when the root of a sapling at which she must have been digging a long time became partially uncovered, the woman and child, now using the spade as a lever, now digging in the ground with their hands, endeavoured to loosen the root, but in vain. Seeing how utterly futile their efforts were, the poor woman made an almost despairing movement, then threw herself down on the ground as if overcome with grief and fatigue, and covering her head with her tattered apron, she began to sob bitterly, while the child, kneeling beside her, also wept pitifully."
"Ah! such poverty as that!"
"I looked at my son. There were tears in his eyes as well as my own. I approached the poor woman and asked her how it happened that she was trying to do work so much beyond her strength, and she told me that her husband had contracted to clear up one quarter of the land, that he had become ill from overwork a couple of days before, that some of the work was still to be done, but that if the job was not finished by Saturday night, he would lose the fruit of nearly a fortnight's labour, for it was on these terms that her husband had undertaken the job, the work being urgent."
"Such contracts are frequently made, and unless the conditions are scrupulously complied with, the poor delinquents have to suffer, I am sorry to say. So the poor woman was trying to take her husband's place, I suppose."
"Yes, for it was a question of making or losing thirty-five francs upon which they were counting to pay the yearly rental of their miserable hovel, and purchase a little rye to live upon until the next harvest. After a few minutes' reflection Frederick said to the poor woman: 'I should think a good worker could finish the job in a couple of days, my good woman.' 'Yes, monsieur, but my husband is too ill to do it,' she replied. 'These poor people mustn't lose their thirty-five francs, mother,' Frederick said to me. 'They must have the money and we cannot afford to give it to them, so let me off from my studies on Friday and Saturday and I will finish the work for them. The poor woman won't run the risk of making herself ill. She can stay at home and nurse her husband, and Sunday she will get her money.'"
"Frederick is a noble boy!" exclaimed M. Dufour.
"Saturday evening just at dusk the task was completed," Madame Bastien continued. "Frederick performed the work with an ardour and cheerfulness which showed that it was a real pleasure to him. I stayed with him all during the two days. There was a big juniper-tree only a little way off, and I sat in the shade of that and read or embroidered while my son worked; and how he worked! such vigorous blows of the spade as he struck, the very earth trembled under my feet."
"I can well believe it; though he is rather slim, he is remarkably strong for one of his years."
"I took him
