“Dutchman!” said the old dame; “very like English. I had a noble lady once for a mistress,” and the dame sighed, “and she was English, though her second husband was a Frenchman. But sit down; I love the English, and if he or you either are English, you are quite safe with me. To tell the truth, though you do speak the language very well, you don’t look like Frenchmen, and your big comrade seems like a man squeezed into a boy’s clothes.” “Well, dame,” returned our hero, struck forcibly by the woman’s words, “I will not deceive you; we are English.” “Ah! monsieur, you will upset the pot,” said the dame, turning round, for Bill seeing the girl trying to lift the heavy utensil, and the girl being a very good-looking one, went to help her, instigated by the cravings of his stomach, which prompted a speedy replenishing. But Bill very scientifically finished the operation, put the logs together, and laughing, gave the girl a kiss, for which he received a box in the face by the laughing and by no means displeased damsel, for Bill was a very handsome specimen of an English tar. “I had better put you both into my little parlour,” said Dame Moret with a smile, “for the girls and the men will be coming in to their mid-day meal; and this comrade of yours, monsieur, for I see you are not of the same grade, will probably betray you, and that would not do.” “You must be more discreet, Bill,” said our hero, seriously, after the good dame had left them in a neat little chamber, as clean as a new pin, with some pretty plants creeping all over the window, and an image of some saint in a glass case over the little chimney-piece. “I thought to pass you off for a Dutchman when you so indiscreetly showed that you were neither dumb nor blind. You must not be kissing the girls that way.” “Me a Dutchman, your honour!” said Bill, trying to look behind him, “Lord love ye, sir, I’m not Dutch built; and as to kissing the girl, ’twas the force of hunger. It’s human nature, we must have food, sir, of some kind.” “Well, I agree with you there, Bill, though I never classed kisses with our other articles of consumption for the stomach. But in future be steady, for I assure you a head is worth very little in France at this moment.” “Well, blow me if they shall have my head or tail either,” said Bill, putting his hand up to see if his pig-tail, which he had thrust under the collar of his jacket, was safe. Dame Moret just then entered the room with a smoking hot dish, of what we should call in England a beggar’s dish, or Irish stew. This she placed on a clean cloth, with two wooden platters and knives and forks. There was so much genuine kindness in the old dame’s actions, and her manner and language were so different from a provincial farm woman, that Lieutenant Thornton, who had not ceased pondering over the words she had said, of having once served an English lady whose second husband was a Frenchman, hazarded a remark, looking the dame in the face.