the other house sheltered the Vallins, who had one girl and three boys.

They all subsisted frugally on soup, potatoes and fresh air. At seven
o'clock in the morning, then at noon, then at six o'clock in the evening,
the housewives got their broods together to give them their food, as the
gooseherds collect their charges. The children were seated, according to
age, before the wooden table, varnished by fifty years of use; the mouths
of the youngest hardly reaching the level of the table. Before them was
placed a bowl filled with bread, soaked in the water in which the
potatoes had been boiled, half a cabbage and three onions; and the whole
line ate until their hunger was appeased. The mother herself fed the
smallest.

A small pot roast on Sunday was a feast for all; and the father on this
day sat longer over the meal, repeating: "I wish we could have this every
day."

One afternoon, in the month of August, a phaeton stopped suddenly in
front of the cottages, and a young woman, who was driving the horses,
said to the gentleman sitting at her side:

"Oh, look at all those children, Henri! How pretty they are, tumbling
about in the dust, like that!"

The man did not answer, accustomed to these outbursts of admiration,
which were a pain and almost a reproach to him. The young woman
continued:

"I must hug them! Oh, how I should like to have one of them--that
one there--the little tiny one!"