He has been in the States for many years, working in a factory." Frankly interested, everyone took another good look at Lorenzo Surprenant.

His face was rounded, with well-cut features, eyes gentle and unwavering, hands white; with his head a little on one side he smiled amiably, neither superior nor embarrassed under this concentrated gaze.
"He came here," continued his uncle, "to settle affairs after the death of Elzear, and to try to sell the farm." "He has no wish to hold on to the land and cultivate it ?" questioned the elder Chapdelaine.
Lorenzo Surprenant's smile broadened and he shook his head.

"No, the idea of settling down on the farm does not tempt me, not in theleast.

I earn good wages where I am and like the place very well; I am used to the work." He checked himself, but it was plain that after the kind of life he had been living and what he had seen of the world, existence on a farm between a humble little village and the forest seemed a thing insupportable.
"When I was a girl," said mother Chapdelaine, "pretty nearly everyone went off to the States.

Farming did not pay as well as it does now, prices were low, we were always hearing of the big wages earned over there in the factories, and every year one family after another sold out for next to nothing and left Canada.