CHAPTER XI.
FACE TO FACE.
Madame Delphine found her house neither burned nor rifled.
"_Ah! ma piti sans popa_! Ah! my little fatherless one!" Her faded bonnet fell back between her shoulders, hanging on by the strings, and her dropped basket, with its "few lill' _becassines-de-mer_" dangling from the handle, rolled out its okra and soup-joint upon the floor.

"_Ma piti_! kiss!--kiss!--kiss!" "But is it good news you have, or bad ?" cried the girl, a fourth or fifth time.
"_Dieu sait, ma c'ere; mo pas conne!_"-- God knows, my darling; I cannot tell! The mother dropped into a chair, covered her face with her apron, and burst into tears, then looked up with an effort to smile, and wept afresh.
"What have you been doing ?" asked the daughter, in a long-drawn, fondling tone.

She leaned forward and unfastened her mother's bonnet-strings.

"Why do you cry ?" "For nothing at all, my darling; for nothing--I am such a fool." The girl's eyes filled.

The mother looked up into her face and said: "No, it is nothing, nothing, only that--" turning her head from side to side with a slow, emotional emphasis, "Miche Vignevielle is the best--_best_ man on the good Lord's earth!" Olive drew a chair close to her mother, sat down and took the little yellow hands into her own white lap, and looked tenderly into her eyes.
Madame Delphine felt herself yielding; she must make a show of telling something: "He sent you those birds!" The girl drew her face back a little.