In this way 'Thanase and his pretty little _jarmaine_--first cousin--Zosephine, now in her fourteenth year, grew to be well acquainted. For at thirteen, of course, she began to move in society, which meant to join in the contra-dance. 'Thanase did not dance with her, or with any one. She wondered why he did not; but many other girls had similar thoughts about themselves. He only played, his playing growing better and better, finer and finer, every time he was heard anew. As to the few other cavaliers, very willing were they to have it so. The music could not be too good, and if 'Thanase was already perceptibly a rival when hoisted up in a chair on top of a table, fiddle and bow in hand, "twisting," to borrow their own phrase--"twisting the ears of that little red beast and rubbing his abdomen with a stick," it was just as well not to urge him to come down into the lists upon the dancing-floor. But they found one night, at length, that the music could be too good--when 'Thanase struck up something that was not a dance, and lads and damsels crowded around standing and listening and asking ever for more, and the ball turned out a failure because the concert was such a success. The memory of that night was of course still vivid next day, Sunday, and Zosephine's memory was as good as any one's. I wish you might have seen her in those days of the early bud. The time had returned when Sosthene could once more get all his household--so had marriages decimated it--into one vehicle, a thing he had not been able to do for almost these twenty years. Zosephine and Bonaventure sat on a back seat contrived for them in the family caleche. In front were the broad-brimmed Campeachy hat of Sosthene and the meek, limp sunbonnet of _la vieille_. About the small figure of the daughter there was always something distinguishing, even if you rode up from behind, that told of youth, of mettle, of self-regard; a neatness of fit in the dress, a firm erectness in the little slim back, a faint proudness of neck, a glimpse of ribbon at the throat, another at the waist; a something of assertion in the slight crispness of her homespun sunbonnet, and a ravishing glint of two sparks inside it as you got one glance within--no more. And as you rode on, if you were a young blade, you would be--as the soldier lads used to say--all curled up; but if you were an old mustache, you would smile inwardly and say to yourself, "She will have her way; she will make all winds blow in her chosen direction; she will please herself; she will be her own good luck and her own commander-in-chief, and, withal, nobody's misery or humiliation, unless you count the swain after swain that will sigh in vain." As for Bonaventure, sitting beside her, you could just see his bare feet limply pendulous under his wide palm-leaf hat. And yet he was a very real personage.