Saying these words he glanced at Marguerite; but the look, full as it was of confused desires, contained no allusion to the lily whiteness, the sweet serenity, the tender coloring which made her face a flower. “Do you work very hard?” she asked, leading him to a wooden seat with a back, painted green. “Here,” she continued, “the tulips are not so close; they will not tire your eyes. Yes, you are right, those colors are dazzling; they give pain.” “Do I work hard?” replied the young man after a short silence, as he smoothed the gravel with his foot. “Yes; I work at many things. My uncle wished to make me a priest.” “Oh!” exclaimed Marguerite, naively. “I resisted; I felt no vocation for it. But it required great courage to oppose my uncle’s wishes. He is so good, he loves me so much! Quite recently he bought a substitute to save me from the conscription--me, a poor orphan!” “What do you mean to be?” asked Marguerite; then, immediately checking herself as though she would unsay the words, she added with a pretty gesture, “I beg your pardon; you must think me very inquisitive.” “Oh, mademoiselle,” said Emmanuel, looking at her with tender admiration, “except my uncle, no one ever asked me that question. I am studying to be a teacher. I cannot do otherwise; I am not rich. If I were principal of a college-school in Flanders I should earn enough to live moderately, and I might marry some single woman whom I could love. That is the life I look forward to. Perhaps that is why I prefer a daisy in the meadows to these splendid tulips, whose purple and gold and rubies and amethysts betoken a life of luxury, just as the daisy is emblematic of a sweet and patriarchal life,--the life of a poor teacher like me.” “I have always called the daisies marguerites,” she said. Emmanuel colored deeply and sought an answer from the sand at his feet. Embarrassed to choose among the thoughts that came to him, which he feared were silly, and disconcerted by his delay in answering, he said at last, “I dared not pronounce your name”--then he paused. “A teacher?” she said. “Mademoiselle, I shall be a teacher only as a means of living: I shall undertake great works which will make me nobly useful. I have a strong taste for historical researches.” “Ah!” That “ah!” so full of secret thoughts added to his confusion; he gave a foolish laugh and said:-- “You make me talk of myself when I ought only to speak of you.” “My mother and your uncle must have finished their conversation, I think,” said Marguerite, looking into the parlor through the windows. “Your mother seems to me greatly changed,” said Emmanuel. “She suffers, but she will not tell us the cause of her sufferings; and we can only try to share them with her.”