"But we must not lose the shoe. It is worth something! Get down, I say, and look for it." "I might look two hours for it, among these ferns, without finding it. And my eyes are not lanterns." "Oh, yes, François," said Sévère, half in jest and half in earnest; "your eyes shine like glowworms." "Then you can see them through my hat, I suppose?" answered François, not at all pleased with what he took for derision. "I cannot see them just now," said Sévère with a sigh as big as herself; "but I have seen them at other times!" "You can never have seen anything amiss in them," returned the innocent waif. "You may as well leave them alone, for they have never looked rudely at you and never will." "I think," broke in at this moment the priest's servant, "that you might skip this part of the story. It is not very interesting to hear all the bad devices of this wicked woman, for ensnaring our waif." "Put yourself at ease, Mother Monique," replied the hemp-dresser. "I shall skip as much as is proper. I know that I am speaking before young people, and I shall not say a word too much." We were just speaking of François's eyes, the expression of which Sévère was trying to make less irreproachable than he had declared it to be. "How old are you, François?" said she with more politeness, so as to let him understand that she was no longer going to treat him like a little boy. "Oh, Heavens! I don't know exactly," answered the waif, beginning to perceive her clumsy advances. "I do not often amuse myself by reckoning my years." "I heard that you were only seventeen," she resumed, "but I wager that you must be twenty, for you are tall, and will soon have a beard on your chin." "It is all the same to me," said François, yawning. "Take care! You are going too fast, my boy. There! I have just lost my purse!" "The deuce you have!" said François, who had not as yet discovered how shy she was. "Then I suppose that you must get off and look for it, for it maybe of value." He jumped down and helped her to dismount. She took pains to lean against him, and he found her heavier than a sack of corn. While she pretended to search for the purse, which was all the time in her pocket, he went on five or six steps, holding the mare by the bridle. "Are not you going to help me look for it?" said she. "I must hold the mare," said he, "for she is thinking of her colt, and if I let her loose she will run home." Sévère looked under the mare's leg, close beside François, and from this he saw that she had lost nothing except her senses. "We had not come as far as this," said he, "when you called out that you had lost your purse. So you certainly cannot find it here." "Do you think I am shamming, you rogue?" said she, trying to pull his ear; "for I really believe that you are a rogue." François drew back, as he was in no mood for a frolic. "No, no," said he, "if you have found your money, let us go, for I should rather be asleep than stay here jesting."