"One of your young men is a child," said my father, "and her nephew into the bargain; and the other,"—and he laughed, coarsely but not ill-humoredly,—"the other is—Coquelin!"
"Coquelin is not a child nor is mademoiselle either," said my mother.
"All the more reason for their going. Gabrielle, will you go?" My father, I fear, was not remarkable in general for his tenderness or his prévenance for the poor girl whom fortune had given him to protect; but from time to time he would wake up to a downright sense of kinship and duty, kindled by the pardonable aggressions of my mother, between whom and her sister-in-law there existed a singular antagonism of temper.
Mlle. de Bergerac looked at my father intently and with a little blush. "Yes, brother, I'll go. The Chevalier can take me en croupe."
So we started, Coquelin on one horse, and I on the other, with my aunt mounted behind me. Our sport for the first part of the journey consisted chiefly in my urging my beast into a
