Soon she saw André come up the hill, skirt the dwarf orchard, then pass between the leafless hedges in the road. When he was at a little distance, she coughed to attract his attention. He looked up. His face which had worn an anxious expression cleared; instead of continuing his way to the courtyard of La Fromentière, he jumped over into a small field that ran beside it, passed the row of hives where the bees were sleeping their winter sleep, and stopped beside Rousille in the threshing-floor, leaning on his pole. As he did so, he endeavoured to assume the half-bantering, half-protecting air he usually adopted towards his sister, thinking himself obliged to laugh with her as with a child. "I was looking for you," he said. "Oh, you were looking for me very badly then. Your head was bent down. I believe you were thinking of someone else than me." "Indeed!" "Yes. Where do you come from with your pole, you roamer? Not from vespers?" "No, from Saint Jean. The water is grand, and jolly cold. On the other side of Le Perrier there are inundations on both sides of the road." "You have been calling at the farms, I suppose. Did you stop at La Seulière?" "You do not know me one bit; do you think I should go against...." He was about to say "against the intrigues of Mathurin, who has returned to his former infatuation," but he stopped short. So happy herself that she did not notice his reticence, she resumed: "To the Levrelles? No? Then to the mill of Moque-Souris, where there is that pretty little Marie Dieu-donnée, the prettiest miller's daughter between here and Beauvoir?" "Still wrong." Trying to be grave, but without succeeding in hiding the joy that pervaded her whole soul, she resumed: "You see, I want you so much to marry, André. And such a dear boy as you are, I think it would be easy. Indeed, you have no idea how greatly I wish it!" André's face grew careworn again as before, and he said: "On the contrary I know very well...." "No. You always think of me as a child. But I am twenty, Driot. I know when others are unhappy. You, for instance, are grieving over our François; you miss him even more than father does. If you were to marry, you would forget your sorrow a little. Settled down at La Fromentière, married to a girl you love, your thoughts would no longer be brooding over the past as now." "And above all," put in André, "there would be a housekeeper here, and little Rousille could marry her faithful swain." Pressing herself back against the rick with a girlish movement of shoulders, head, and arms, Rousille raised herself and knelt forward the better to reach her pocket. Bending over the aperture hidden amongst the innumerable folds of her dress, she extracted the letter and gently held up the square of paper to her brother, raising it to the level of her head and following it with her eyes as she did so.