“What does it tell? A story without an end, I think.” He rose and looked through the window. A little complaining horn, pivoted on the top of a long pole, swung to the lightest breeze and caught and passed it on in waves of protest. Upon a slack wire or two that, like tent ropes, held the pole secure, lower currents of air fluttered with the sound of a knife sharpening on a tinker’s grindstone. Ned grunted and resumed his seat. “It would drive me silly to have that for ever in my ears. How can you stand it, Nicette?” “It speaks to me of many things, monsieur.” “What, for instance?” “Monsieur will laugh.” “No, I will not.” “The whispering of the flower spirits, then; the steps and the low voices that come from beyond the dawn before even the shepherds are awake; sometimes the noise of the sea.” “You have travelled?” “Ah! no, monsieur. But I have heard how the great waters mutter all their secrets to their shells; and I like to think that my air-shell up there is in the confidence of the strange people one cannot see.” Ned paused in his work, and dwelt musingly on his companion’s face. “So,” said he, “you are a half-saint on the strength of these little odd ecstasies.” “Indeed I am no part of a saint.” “Now, Nicette, you must put no restraint on your speech whenever I am with you. You interest me more, I think, than anybody I have ever seen. Do you know, I have no imaginative faculty like this of yours. I am too inquisitive to dream nicely. I like to get to the bottom of things.” Obviously there was some lure about him that drew the girl, in tentative advances, from her reserve. “I do not think there is a bottom to things,” she said, looking up, a little breathless at her own daring. “Some day, perhaps, when monsieur thinks he has reached it, he will fall through and find himself flying.” “Shall I?” said Ned abstractedly, for he was wrestling with a difficulty. Then he went on, with a quick change of subject,--“are you very fond of your cow?” Nicette’s eyes opened in wonder. “Of Madeleine? Oh yes, monsieur.” “How often do you feed her?” “But twice in the day.” “Of green meat that you gather?” “It is the fashion with us. Is it not so to stall the cattle in the country of monsieur?” “Only at night. And how often do you feed your little brother?” The unexpected question completely dumfounded the girl. Ned laughed, put his brush in his mouth, and fetched a louis-d’or from his pocket. “Will you take this now, Nicette?” Something to his consternation, she rose hurriedly from her seat, made as if to leave the room, and broke into a little fit of weeping. He went up and spoke to her soothingly-- “Silly, pretty child! are you ashamed? You are none the worse in my eyes for showing some inconsistency. Think only you are in the confidence of one of your strange people. Here, take it, Nicette.” She threw his hand away. The coin rang on the floor.