Azenor had already in his eagerness arranged a tray, upon which was a smoking cup of _café au lait_. He had buttered and jellied generous slices of bread, and was searching wildly for something when Tranquiline reëntered. "W'at become o' that half of chicken-pie, Tranquiline, that was yere in the _garde manger_ yesterday?" "W'at chicken-pie? W'at _garde manger_?" blustered the woman. "Like we got mo' 'en one _garde manger_ in the house, Tranquiline!" "You jis' like ole Ma'ame Azenor use' to be, you is! You 'spec' chicken-pie gwine las' etarnal? W'en some'pin done sp'ilt, I flings it' way. Dat's me--dat's Tranquiline!" So Azenor resigned himself,--what else could he do?--and sent the tray, incomplete, as he fancied it, out to Lalie. He trembled at thought of what he did; he, whose nerves were usually as steady as some piece of steel mechanism. Would it anger her if she suspected? Would it please her if she knew? Would she say this or that to Tranquiline? And would Tranquiline tell him truly what she said--how she looked? As it was Sunday, Azenor did not work that afternoon. Instead, he took a book out under the trees, as he often did, and sat reading it, from the first sound of the Vesper bell, that came faintly across the fields, till the Angelus. All that time! He turned many a page, yet in the end did not know what he had read. With his pencil he had traced "Lalie" upon every margin, and was saying it softly to himself. * * * * * Another Sunday Azenor saw Lalie at mass--and again. Once he walked with her and showed her the short cut across the cotton-field. She was very glad that day, and told him she was going to work--her grandmother said she might. She was going to hoe, up in the fields with Monsieur Le Blôt's hands. He entreated her not to; and when she asked his reason, he could not tell her, but turned and tore shyly and savagely at the elder-blossoms that grew along the fence. Then they stopped where she was going to cross the fence from the field into the lane. He wanted to tell her that was his house which they could see not far away; but he did not dare to, since he had fed her there on the morning she was hungry. "An' you say yo' gran'ma's goin' to let you work? She keeps you f'om workin', _donc_?" He wanted to question her about her grandmother, and could think of no other way to begin. "Po' ole grand'mère!" she answered. "I don' b'lieve she know mos' time w'at she's doin'. Sometime she say' I aint no betta an' one nigga, an' she fo'ce me to work. Then she say she know I'm goin' be one canaille like maman, an' she make me set down still, like she would want to kill me if I would move. Her, she on'y want' to be out in the wood', day an' night, day an' night. She ain' got her right head, po' grand'mère. I know she ain't."