'Should anything happen to Marie,' she had said to Michel Voss, before she gave him her troth, 'you will let Minnie Bromar come to me ?' Michel Voss, who was then hotly in love with his hoped-for bride--hotly in love in spite of his four-and-forty years--gave the required promise.

The said 'something' which had been suspected had happened.

Madame Bromar had died, and Minnie Bromar her daughter--or Marie as she was always afterwards called--had at once been taken into the house at Granpere.

Michel never thought twice about it when he was reminded of his promise.
'If I hadn't promised at all, she should come the same,' he said.
'The house is big enough for a dozen more yet.' In saying this he perhaps alluded to a little baby that then lay in a cradle in his wife's room, by means of which at that time Madame Voss was able to make her big husband do pretty nearly anything that she pleased.

So Marie Bromar, then just fifteen years of age, was brought over from Epinal to Granpere, and the house certainly was not felt to be too small because she was there.