He is so good, he loves me so much! Quite recently he bought a substitute to save me from the conscription--me, a poor orphan!" "What do you mean to be ?" asked Marguerite; then, immediately checking herself as though she would unsay the words, she added with a pretty gesture, "I beg your pardon; you must think me very inquisitive." "Oh, mademoiselle," said Emmanuel, looking at her with tender admiration, "except my uncle, no one ever asked me that question.

I am studying to be a teacher.

I cannot do otherwise; I am not rich.

If I were principal of a college-school in Flanders I should earn enough to live moderately, and I might marry some single woman whom I could love.
That is the life I look forward to.

Perhaps that is why I prefer a daisy in the meadows to these splendid tulips, whose purple and gold and rubies and amethysts betoken a life of luxury, just as the daisy is emblematic of a sweet and patriarchal life,--the life of a poor teacher like me." "I have always called the daisies marguerites," she said.
Emmanuel colored deeply and sought an answer from the sand at his feet.
Embarrassed to choose among the thoughts that came to him, which he feared were silly, and disconcerted by his delay in answering, he said at last, "I dared not pronounce your name"-- then he paused.
"A teacher ?" she said.
"Mademoiselle, I shall be a teacher only as a means of living: I shall undertake great works which will make me nobly useful.