Suddenly--for we have turned away our faces--the little old woman's hand is plunged into the cotton bag under our feet. We venture to look around. The tears have gone; her face beams like the sun, as she brings out of the depths a couple of eggs. Another dive, and she emerges with a piece of bread. A pinch of salt is added from the basket, and her breakfast is complete. She hospitably offers a share to each of us. We decline; and as a shadow dims the brightness of her face, Katie adds quickly,--
The little old woman rolls her round, blue eyes to heaven, with a pious ejaculation. Such lavish extravagance is beyond her comprehension.
"That is like you rich people," she says. "We are only too happy if the good God sends us _one_." And she relapses into a wondering silence.
"Does madame travel far?" we venture presently.
"Ah, yes." And she shakes her head slowly. Words cannot express the distance, it is so great.
"But she has been this way before?" we go on.
"No, never before." And again the round, blue eyes seek heaven, and again a deep sigh follows the words. She has finished her lunch, and, diving under our feet, emerges after a time with a box, which, opened, discloses a small store of peppermints. This she offers with some hesitation, and we each hasten to accept one, her countenance beaming more and more as they disappear. "Given to hospitality," the little old woman has been, we know.
When the box is with difficulty replaced, the string of the bag drawn, the basket arranged to her satisfaction, the umbrella placed at a pleasing angle, she balances herself upon the edge of the seat, and glances fearfully from side to side as we swing along the smooth road. Once, when the wheel passes over a stone, she seems to murmur a prayer.
"O, very much. These diligences are most dangerous." And now she is glancing over her shoulder at a rocky wall of mountains which follows the road at a distance. "They might fall." And she shudders with the thought. We assure her that it is impossible; but she has heard of a rock falling upon a diligence, and thinks it was upon this road. And all the horror of the fearful catastrophe is depicted upon her face. Gradually we learn that the little old woman has never travelled in a diligence before; that she has never before made any journey, in fact. For forty years she has kept the house of the _curé_ in her native village. Now, she tells us with a sigh, and uplifted eyes, he has "become dead," and she is obliged to seek a home elsewhere among strangers. Here she turns away her eyes, which grow dim as her smile, and for a moment forgets her fears.