If through them all you feel something which links them together, which moreover makes you and me more intimate with each other, then I shall feel as happy as Sheraton’s apprentice must have felt when some noble patron of the master’s stopped in the workshops to give him a word of encouragement. STACY AUMONIER. CONTENTS PAGE THE GOLDEN WINDMILL 3 A SOURCE OF IRRITATION 35 THE BROTHERS 59 “OLD IRON” 79 LITTLE WHITE FROCK 109 A GOOD ACTION 137 THEM OTHERS 169 THE BENT TREE 199 THE GREAT UNIMPRESSIONABLE 213 THE GOLDEN WINDMILL THE GOLDEN WINDMILL At the top of the hill the party halted. It had been a long trek up and the sun was hot. Monsieur Roget fanned himself with his hat, and his eye alighted on a large pile of cut fern-leaves. “But this will suit me admirably!” he remarked, and he plumped his squat little figure down, and taking out his large English pipe he began to stuff tobacco into it. “My little one,” said his stout wife, “I should not advise you to go to sleep. You know that to do so in the afternoon always gives you an indisposition.” “Oh, la la! No, no, no. I do not go to sleep, but—this position suits me admirably!” he replied. “Oh, papa, papa! ... lazybones!” exclaimed his pretty daughter Louise. “And if we leave you, you will sleep like a dormouse.” “It is very hot!” rejoined the father. “Leave him alone,” said Madame Roget, “and we will go down to that place that looks like an inn, and see whether they will sell us milk. Where is Lisette?” “Lisette! Where should she be?” And of course it was foolish to ask. Lisette, the younger daughter, had been lost in the wood on the way up, with her _fiancé_, Paul Fasquelle. Indeed, the party had all become rather scattered. It is a peculiarity of picnics. Monsieur Roget’s eldest son, Anton, was playing at see-saw with his three children on the trunk of a fallen tree. His wife was talking to Madame Aubert, and occasionally glancing up to exclaim: “Careful, my darlings!” Monsieur Roget was left alone.