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self.
‘We should be very happy to believe that. Fifteen is very
young to leave us.’
‘Oh,’ exclaimed the gentleman with more vivacity than
he had yet used, ‘it is not I who wish to take her away. I wish
you could keep her always!’
‘Ah, monsieur,’ said the elder sister, smiling and getting
up, ‘good as she is, she’s made for the world. Le monde y
gagnera.’
‘If all the good people were hidden away in convents how
would the world get on?’ her companion softly enquired,
rising also.
This was a question of a wider bearing than the good
woman apparently supposed; and the lady in spectacles
took a harmonizing view by saying comfortably: ‘Fortu-
nately there are good people everywhere.’
‘If you’re going there will be two less here,’ her host re-
marked gallantly.
For this extravagant sally his simple visitors had no
answer, and they simply looked at each other in decent dep-
recation; but their confusion was speedily covered by the
return of the young girl with two large bunches of roses—
one of them all white, the other red.
‘I give you your choice, Mamman Catherine,’ said the
child. ‘It’s only the colour that’s different, Mamman Justine;
there are just as many roses in one bunch as in the other.’
The two sisters turned to each other, smiling and hesi-
tating, with ‘Which will you take?’ and ‘No, it’s for you to
choose.’

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