It was the portrait of a little girl--a very little girl. She did not seem more than four or five years old: one dimpled shoulder had escaped from the little white frock, the fair hair brushed back from the forehead was tied with a plain white ribbon--nothing could be simpler. But there was a great charm about it: the eyes were so bright and happy-looking, the rosy mouth seemed so ready to kiss you--it looked what it was, the picture of a creature who had never known sorrow or fear. "How pretty she is!" said Edmee, as she twisted the ivy-leaves round the frame, and a ray of sunshine fell on the little face. "I think she gets prettier and prettier--don't you, Marie? I wonder when father and mother will tell us the story about her." Pierre stopped short in his part of the business, which was that of arranging the garland over the mantelpiece, to listen to what his sisters were saying. "Suppose we ask to hear it to-morrow," he said, "for a treat? Mother is always ready to give us a treat on her birthday." "Not instead of the creams and the cake," put in Joseph, who was rather a greedy little boy. "I wouldn't like that. Stories aren't as nice as cake." "Little glutton!" exclaimed Pierre: "you deserve to have none. All the same I know what I know. One has but to step inside the kitchen and to sniff a little to see that mother forgets nothing." "Indeed!" said Joseph, with satisfaction. "Yes, truly, I could almost fancy I smelt it even in here. That comes of having an oven of one's own. There is no other house at Valmont with an oven like ours. When I am a man, if I cannot afford an oven of my own in my kitchen, I shall--" "What?" asked Marie. "I shall be a baker," said Joseph, solemnly. "I always stop before the door of Bernard, the baker, to smell the bread, especially on Saturdays, when he is baking the Sunday cakes and his Reverence's pie. Ah, how it smells!" "A baker!" said Pierre with disdain. "Not for worlds! To see Bernard stewing away in his bakehouse till he can scarcely breathe is enough to make one hate the thoughts of cakes. A baker indeed! Ah, no--the open air and the fields for me! I shall be a farmer, like my father and my grandfathers and my great-grandfathers. We have always been plain, honest farmers, we Marcels--and my mother's people, the Laurents, too!" "Some one told me once," said Edmee, who, her work finished, was standing thoughtfully contemplating the effect of the pretty wreath round the little face, "some one told me once, or I dreamt it, that the little old portrait was that of a great-grandmother of ours. I wonder if it is true? If all our people have always been farmers I don't see how it can be, for that little girl doesn't look like a farmer's daughter--and besides, they wouldn't have made a grand picture of her in that case." "Mother must know," said Marie.