Charlot, standing on the threshold of his cottage, watched him pass.
In the evening, at supper, he said to the old people: "You must have been stupid to let the Vallins's boy be taken."
The mother answered, obstinately: "I wouldn't sell _my_ child."
The father said nothing. The son continued:
"It is unfortunate to be sacrificed like that." Then Father Tuvache, in an angry tone, said:
"Are you going to reproach us for having kept you?" And the young man said, brutally:
"Yes, I reproach you for having been such simpletons. Parents like you make the misfortune of their children. You deserve that I should leave you."
The old woman wept over her plate. She moaned, as she swallowed the spoonfuls of soup, half of which she spilled: "One may kill one's self to bring up children."
Then the boy said, roughly: "I'd rather not have been born than be what I am. When I saw the other my heart stood still. I said to myself: 'See what I should have been now!'" He arose: "See here, I feel that I would do better not to stay here, because I should bring it up against you from morning till night, and I should make your life miserable. I shall never forgive you that, you know!"
The two old people were silent, downcast, in tears.
He continued: "No, the thought of that would be too hard. I'd rather go look for a living somewhere else."
He opened the door. A sound of voices entered. The Vallins were celebrating the return of their child.
LADY HARTLEY (_née_ Miss Persis Van Ness) gave a little gasp. In her excitement the paper rustled noisily to her knee.
"O-h! Have you seen this?" She shot the _Morning Post_ across the breakfast table to Mrs. Rufus P. Urmy, with her finger marking a paragraph.
Mrs. Urmy glanced at it. "I guess it ought to corral him right away," she said, with the merest suspicion of embarrassment. "You see, it's Jeannette's last chance. Two seasons in England and never a catch, so I----"
"_You_ did it?" Lady Hartley looked at her friend in round-eyed wonder.
"I--I had to do something," allowed Mrs. Urmy, with a dawning suspicion that perhaps she had, after all, run afoul of British conventions, which she found as difficult of comprehension as her regular morning study of Debrett.
"That's so. Jeannette'll raise Cain." Mrs. Urmy got up from the table. "It's this a-way, Persis. I reckon I fixed your little affair up with Lord Hartley to home, and you've got to thank me for it. Now, I'm trying to do the same for my girl. She can't, or she won't, play her own hand. Every chance she's had she's let slide, and I allow she's got to marry a title before I go back to the States. Some one's got to hustle when Providence isn't attending to business, and as there's nobody else to do it, I've taken on the contract." She pointed to the paragraph. "I own up I don't see just how, but there wasn't much time, and it was the best I could do."