"Now we will finish the inside of your apartment, Fleur-de-Marie. The curtains and furniture are green, like the blinds; and outside the window grow an enormous rose-tree and honeysuckle, which entirely cover this side of the farm, and so surround your casements that you have only to stretch out your hand to gather a large bunch of roses and honeysuckle wet with the early morning dew." "Ah, M. Rodolph, what a good painter you are!" "Now this is the way you will pass your day--" "Yes, yes, let us see how I shall employ myself all day." "Early in the morning your good aunt wakes you with a tender kiss; she brings with her a bowl of new milk, just warm, which she prays you to drink, as she fancies you are delicate about the lungs, poor dear child! Well, you do as she wishes you; then rise, and take a walk around the farm; pay a visit to Musette, the poultry, your pets the pigeons, the flowers in the garden, till nine o'clock, when your writing-master arrives--" "My writing-master?" "Why, you know, unless you learned such necessary things as reading, writing, and accounts, you would not be able to assist your aunt to keep her books relative to the produce of the farm." "Oh, to be sure! How very stupid of me not to recollect that I must learn to write well, if I wished to help my aunt!" cried the young girl, so thoroughly absorbed in the picture of this peaceful life as to believe for the moment in its reality. "After your lesson is concluded, you will occupy yourself in household matters, or embroider some pretty little article of dress for yourself; then you will practise your writing for an hour or two, and, when that is done, join your aunt in her round of visits to the different operations of the farm; in the summer, to see how the reapers get on in the hay field; in harvest-time, to observe the reapers, and afterwards to enjoy the delight with which the gleaners pick up the scattered ears of grain; by this time you will have almost tired yourself, and gathering a large handful of wild herbs, carefully selected by you as the known favourites of your dear Musette, you turn your steps homewards--" "But we go back through the meadow, dear M. Rodolph, do we not?" inquired La Goualeuse, as earnestly as though every syllable her ears drank in was to be effectually brought to pass.