CHAPTER VI.
THE APPLE-TREE OF STEFANOS.
"And age recounts the feats of youth." THOMSON.
"I was the only daughter among nine children," began old Marie, when the girls and Ralph had made her sit down in their own parlour, and they had all drunk her "good health and many happy returns" in raspberry vinegar and water, and then teased her till she consented to tell them her story.
"That is to say, my little young ladies and young Monsieur, I had eight brothers.

Not all my own brothers: my father had married twice, you see.
And always when the babies came they wanted a little girl, for in the family of my grandfather too, there were but three boys, my father and his two brothers, and never a sister.

And so one can imagine how I was feted when I came, and of all none was so pleased as the old 'bon papa,' my father's father.

He was already very old: in our family we have been prudent and not married boy and girl, as so many do now, and wish often they could undo it again.

Before he had married he had saved and laid by, and for his sons there was something for each when they too started in life.