"Let your father have a little quiet, and go and play in the dining-room." They obeyed; for there they could move chairs as they liked, build houses of them, and play at making calls.

Did ever anybody have such wild ideas at five years of age as this Maria?
She took the arm of Amedee, whom she called her little husband, and went to call upon her sister and show her her little child, a pasteboard doll with a large head, wrapped up in a napkin.
"As you see, Madame, it is a boy." "What do you intend to make of him when he grows up ?" asked Louise, who lent herself complacently to the play, for she was ten years old and quite a young lady, if you please.
"Why, Madame," replied Maria, gravely, "he will be a soldier." At that moment the engraver, who had left his bench to stretch his legs a little and to light his Abd-el-Kader for the third time, came and stood at the threshold of his room.

Madame Gerard, reassured as to the state of her stew, which was slowly cooking--and oh, how good it smelled in the kitchen!--entered the dining-room.

Both looked at the children, so comical and so graceful, as they made their little grimaces! Then the husband glanced at his wife, and the wife at the husband, and both burst out into hearty laughter.
There never was any laughter in the apartment of the Violettes.

It was cough! cough! cough! almost to suffocation, almost to death! This gentle young woman with the heavy hair was about to die! When the beautiful starry evenings should come again, she would no longer linger on the balcony, or press her husband's hand as they gazed at the stars.