His bedchamber was bare and clean, and the bed in it narrow and hard; but between the two was a dining-room that would tempt a laugh to the lips of any who looked in.

The table was small, but stout, and all the furniture of the room substantial, made of fine wood, and carved just enough to give the notion of wrinkling pleasantry.

His mother's and sister's doing, Pere Jerome would explain; they would not permit this apartment--or department--to suffer.

Therein, as well as in the parlor, there was odor, but of a more epicurean sort, that explained interestingly the Pere Jerome's rotundity and rosy smile.
In this room, and about this miniature round table, used sometimes to sit with Pere Jerome two friends to whom he was deeply attached--one, Evariste Varrillat, a playmate from early childhood, now his brother-in-law; the other, Jean Thompson, a companion from youngest manhood, and both, like the little priest himself, the regretful rememberers of a fourth comrade who was a comrade no more.

Like Pere Jerome, they had come, through years, to the thick of life's conflicts,--the priest's brother-in-law a physician, the other an attorney, and brother-in-law to the lonely wanderer,--yet they loved to huddle around this small board, and be boys again in heart while men in mind.