He had supped, he said, and while the others were at their meal he sat by the door in the cooler air that entered, balancing his chair on two legs.

The pipes going, talk naturally turned toward the labours of the soil, and the care of stock.
"With five men," said Eutrope, "you have a good bit of land to show in a short while.

But working alone, as I do, without a horse to draw the heavy logs, one makes poor headway and has a hard time of it.

However you are always getting on, getting on." Madame Chapdelaine, liking him, and feeling a great sympathy for his solitary labour in this worthy cause, gave him a few words of encouragement.

"You don't make very quick progress by yourself, that is true enough, but a man lives on very little when he is alone, and then your brother Egide will be coming back from the drive with two or three hundred dollars at least, in time for the hay-making and the harvest, and, if you both stay here next winter, in less than two years you will have a good farm." Assenting with a nod, his glance found Maria, as though drawn thither by the thought that in two years, fortune favouring, he might hope.
"How does the drive go ?" asked Esdras.