"Oh!--come here quick, every one of you, and see what's driving in! It's Monsieur Brierley in the dearest of donkey carts. Where did you get that absurd little beast?" "Whoa! Victor Hugo!" shouted Brierley, springing from the cart (both together wouldn't have covered the space occupied by an upright piano). "I found him last fall, my dear madame la marquise, in a stable in Caen, kicking out the partitions, and brought him home to my Abandoned Farm by the Marsh to add a touch of hilarity to my surroundings. He wakes me every morning with his hind feet against the door of his stable and is a most engaging and delightful companion. Hello! Lemois, and--you here, Herbert! Shake!--awful glad to see you. Where's Louis?--gone for blossoms?--just like him. I tried to get here earlier, to help you all, but Victor Hugo is peculiar and considerably set in his ways, and if I had tried to overpersuade him he might still be a mile down the road with his feet anchored in the mud. "Take a look inside my cart, will you, Herbert? My contribution to start the young couple housekeeping"--and he pulled off a covering of clean straw--"six dozen eggs, a pair of mallards--shot them yesterday, and about the last of them this season, and no business to shoot even these--a basket of potatoes, a dozen of pear jam--in family jars--and a small keg of apple-jack--the two last, the sweet and the strong, to be eaten and drank together to keep peace in the house. No, don't take Hugo out of the shafts, Lemois, and don't say anything about its being meal-time, not loud enough for him to hear. When the fun is over I'm going to drive him down to madame's garage and pack the housekeeping stuff away in Mignon's cupboard." Long before noon the court-yard, as well as the archway and the kiosks and arbors, had begun to fill up, the news of the extraordinary proceedings having brought everybody ahead of time. There was the mayor, wearing his tricolor sash and insignia of office, and with him his stout, double-chinned wife in black silk and white gloves--bareheaded, except for a gold ornament that looked like a bunch of twisted hair-pins; there were the apothecary and the notary and the man who sold pottery, not forgetting the bustling, outspoken fat doctor who had sewed up Gaston's head the time madame's villa went sliddering toward the sea--or tried to--as well as all the great and small folk of the village who claimed the least little bit of acquaintance with any one connected with the function from Lemois down.