Surely, a girl may joke sometimes." "And you do love me, don't you ?" and Jacques now got very close to his mistress.
"Ah! but why did you let me walk home all the way by myself?
You know I love you dearly; but you must beg my pardon for that, before I'll ever tell you so again." And Jacques did beg her pardon in a manner of his own twenty times, sitting by the gurgling mill-stream, and to tell the truth Annot seemed well pleased with the way in which he did it; and then when the fountain of her love was opened, and the sluice gate of her displeasure removed, she told him how she would pray for him till he came back safe from the wars; how she would never speak a word to mortal man in the way of courting, till he came back to make her his wife; how she would grieve, should he be wounded; how she would die, should he be killed in battle: and then she gave him a little charm, which she had worked for him, and put it round his neck, and told him she had taken it with her to St.
Laud, to give it him there beneath the cross, only he had gone away from her, so that she couldn't do so: and then Jacques begged pardon again and again in his own queer way; and then, having sat there by the mill-stream till the last red streak of sunlight was gone, they returned home to the village, and Annot told her father that Dame Rouel had been so very pressing, she had made them stay there to eat bread and cheese.
And so Annot, at last, went to bed without her supper, and dreamed not of Cathelineau, but of her own lover, Jacques Chapeau..