"Very good, we three will go there," he said, calling Maurice and Jean, "and we will bring you back lots of water?" "Wait till I give you...." she opened the cupboard. "Here is the pail. Take care, it is very heavy." Albert began to laugh. "Come along, my friends. I have got an idea." Esperance watched him as he went out and for an instant she loved him. While waiting for the young men to return she settled her mother on a chest. The only chair in the house was a straw arm-chair with a high back, on which the old Borderie was sitting and which she had not thought of offering. "No doubt," said Mme. Darbois in a low tone, "little by little she has had to sell everything she had." The girls opened a bottle of wine, the jar of prunes and the jar of candy, and arranged them on the board pointed out by the poor woman, who thanked them simply and said, "Ah! my little lad, how good it will be for him!" "And for you too, you know. Now drink some wine and take some coffee," said Esperance, caressing the grandmother's hands. "I haven't got enough wood to boil the water." Madame Darbois looked at the girls contritely. "Wood," she said. "And we never thought of it." "If you aren't poor, you don't have to think," muttered the old woman. A contraction of the heart, the sting of remorse, pierced Mme. Darbois and the two girls. "To-morrow you shall have plenty of wood, Mme. Borderie." "That will be very good, kind lady, for then we can have a little heat, and that is what the little one needs. The sun never comes into my room, ah! it can't, the hole is not big enough. And then in the evening when the fog begins, my little boy, he coughs so, and that makes me shiver; then I take him in my bed, but my blood is not warm enough so he can't get warm. Ah! but that will be good for him, to have wood! Thank you." For the first time her face broke into a smile, for she had almost forgotten how to smile. Her life had been nearly all tears. Suddenly she raised her head in fright--"What may that noise be?" At the door a cart stopped. On the cart a big barrel. "Here is some water, Mme. Borderie, that we are going to pour into your cistern." With the help of the carter and Maurice, Albert got to work and behold! the cistern half full. Albert tried the pump. "Don't waste any, in Heaven's name," cried the old woman. "No, no, never mind. Anyway there is another barrel on its way." In fact another cart was stopping before the door. This barrel being smaller. Albert, impatient at the peasant's slowness, picked it up himself and rolling it along, emptied it like the first in the cistern. "Look there, will you, Mother," cried out the second carter, "that isn't any cheap water. The fine gentleman has given a hundred francs to the town so you could have that water there."