After all, too much soaking is bad for one’s tongue and one’s wit, so I leave friend Vincent and his escort drawing more corks, and make for the open fields. The day is really too fine to waste between walls. My old friend Chamaille, the vicar, has come up from his village in a little donkey-cart to dine with the Archdeacon of St. Martin. As he asked me to go with him for part of the way back, we climb into the tail of the cart, little Glodie and I, and off goes the donkey! She is so small that I suggest we shall take her up on the seat between us. As the road stretches out long and white, the sun looks drowsy, as if he meant to warm his own chimney corner more than ours. The donkey drowses also and stops as if to think, so the vicar shouts indignantly, in his great voice like a bell, “Madelon!” Donkey jumps, stirs her spindle-shanks, zigzags from one rut to another, then stops again to meditate, regardless of our objurgations. “Beast of ill-omen, if you had not the sign of the Cross on your back, I would break this stick on you,” roars the vicar, all the time basting her flanks with his cane. We stopped to rest ourselves at the inn, just where the road turns to go down to the white hamlet of Armes which lies looking at its fair reflection in the water. Near by in the field we see some girls dancing round an old nut tree whose great withered branches stretch toward the pale sky. They have been carrying Shrove-Tuesday pancakes to the magpies. “Come and dance too!” they cry. “Look, Glodie, look at the magpie ’way up there; look at her white breast over the edge of the nest! She is peeping out to see what she can see, and she has made her little house open all around so that nothing can escape her sharp eye and her chattering tongue. The wind blows through it, so that she is wet and cold, but as long as she sees all that goes on, she is satisfied. Now she is out of humor and seems to say, ‘Rude people, be off with your presents. Do you think if I wanted your cakes I could not pick them up in your very houses? There is no fun in eating things that are given to you; stolen dainties are the only ones I relish.’” “Grandad, why do they give her pancakes all tied up with ribbons? Why do they bring good-wishes to that old pilferer?” “Because, darling, in this world it is better to be on good terms with evildoers.” “What’s that, Colas Breugnon? What idea are you putting in the child’s head?” growled the vicar. “I am not holding it up for her admiration. I only tell her that is what every one does, you yourself, vicar, among the first. Don’t stare at me like that, you know when you have a parishioner who knows everything, sees everything, pokes her nose into everything, and is as full of spite as a nut is full of meat you would stuff her mouth with cakes, if that would keep her quiet.” “Lord, if that were enough,” sighed the vicar. “I am really not fair to old magpie, she is better than some women, and her tongue is sometimes of use!”