"And if I had passed without seeing you, you would have stayed out all night and the wolf would have eaten you!" "Oh! I knew you'd see me!" rejoined Petit-Pierre confidently. "Well, kiss me now, Pierre, bid me good-by, and run back to the house if you don't want them to have supper without you." "Why, ain't you going to take me with you?" cried the child, beginning to rub his eyes to show that he proposed to weep. "You know grandpa and grandma don't approve of it," said Germain, taking refuge behind the authority of the old people, like one who places but slight reliance on his own. But the child heard nothing. He began to cry in good earnest, saying that as long as his father took little Marie, he could take him too. He was told that they would have to go through great forests, that there were many wicked animals there that ate little children, that Grise would not carry three, that she said so when they started, and that in the country they were going to there was no bed or supper for little monkeys. All these excellent reasons did not convince Petit-Pierre; he threw himself on the grass and rolled about, crying that his father did not love him, and that, if he refused to take him with him, he would not go back to the house day or night. Germain's fatherly heart was as soft and weak as a woman's. His wife's death, the care he had been compelled to bestow upon his little ones, together with the thought that the poor motherless children needed to be dearly loved, had combined to make it so, and such a hard struggle took place within him, especially as he was ashamed of his weakness, and tried to conceal his distress from little Marie, that the perspiration stood out on his forehead and his eyes were bordered with red as if they, too, were all ready to shed tears. Finally, he tried to be angry; but as he turned to little Marie, as if to call her to witness his firmness of will, he saw that the dear girl's face was bathed in tears, and, all his courage deserting him, it was impossible for him to keep back his own, although he continued to scold and threaten. "Really, your heart is too hard," said little Marie at last, "and for my part, I could never hold out like that against a child who is so unhappy. Come, Germain, take him along. Your mare is used to carrying two grown people and a child, for your brother-in-law and his wife, who is much heavier than I am, go to market every Saturday, with their boy, on the honest creature's back. You can put him up in front of you; indeed, I'd rather go all alone on foot than make the little fellow suffer so."