We are greatly obliged to you, but I am going to put the horse in immediately after dinner so as to get home in good time." Old Nazaire Larouche spoke of the morning's sermon which had struck him as well reasoned and fine; then after a spell of silence he exclaimed abruptly--"Have you baked ?" His amazed sister-in-law gaped at him for a moment before it stole upon her that this was his way of asking for bread.

A little later he attacked her with another question:--"Is your pump working well ?" Which signified that there was no water on the table.

Azalma rose to get it, and behind her back the old fellow sent a sly wink in the direction of Maria.

"I assault her with parables," chuckled he.
"It's politer." On the plank walls of the house were pasted old newspapers, and calendars hung there such as the manufacturers of farm implements or grain merchants scatter abroad, and also prints of a religious character; a representation in crudest colour and almost innocent of perspective of the basilica at Ste.

Anne de Beaupre--, a likeness of Pope Pius X.; a chromo where the palely-smiling Virgin Mary disclosed her bleeding heart encircled with a golden nimbus.
"This is nicer than our house," thought Maria to herself.