"No, I did not know it."

"And Bouffe, my boy, Bouffe was a painter on glass."

"You are joking!"

"No, indeed. How is it you do not know these things?"




THE ADOPTED SON

The two cottages stood beside each other at the foot of a hill near a
little seashore resort. The two peasants labored hard on the unproductive
soil to rear their little ones, and each family had four.

Before the adjoining doors a whole troop of urchins played and tumbled
about from morning till night. The two eldest were six years old, and the
youngest were about fifteen months; the marriages, and afterward the
births, having taken place nearly simultaneously in both families.

The two mothers could hardly distinguish their own offspring among the
lot, and as for the fathers, they were altogether at sea. The eight names
danced in their heads; they were always getting them mixed up; and when
they wished to call one child, the men often called three names before
getting the right one.

The first of the two cottages, as you came up from the bathing beach,
Rolleport, was occupied by the Tuvaches, who had three girls and one boy;