Alice of Old Vincennes

								

much better than you make yourself out to be. Your duty will control
you; you do it nobly at last, my child."
"True enough, Father Beret, true enough!" she responded, laughing,
"your perception is most excellent, which I will prove to you
immediately."
She rose while speaking and went into the house.
"I'll return in a minute or two," she called back from a region which
Pere Beret well knew was that of the pantry; "don't get impatient and
go away!"
Pere Beret laughed softly at the preposterous suggestion that he would
even dream of going out in the rain, which was now roaring heavily on
the loose board roof, and miss a cut of cherry pie--a cherry pie of
Alice's making! And the Roussillon claret, too, was always excellent.
"Ah, child," he thought, "your old Father is not going away."
She presently returned, bearing on a wooden tray a ruby-stained pie and
a short, stout bottle flanked by two glasses.
"Of course I'm better than I sometimes appear to be," she said, almost
humbly, but with mischief still in her voice and eyes, "and I shall get
to be very good when I have grown old. The sweetness of my present
nature is in this pie."
She set the tray on a three-legged stool which she pushed close to him.
"There now," she said, "let the rain come, you'll be happy, rain or
shine, while the pie and wine last, I'll be bound."
Pere Beret fell to eating right heartily, meantime handing Jean a
liberal piece of the luscious pie.
"It is good, my daughter, very good, indeed," the priest remarked with
his mouth full. "Madame Roussillon has not neglected your culinary
education." Alice filled a glass for him. It was Bordeaux and very
fragrant. The bouquet reminded him of his sunny boyhood in France, of
his journey up to Paris and of his careless, joy-brimmed youth in the
gay city. How far away, how misty, yet how thrillingly sweet it all
was! He sat with half closed eyes awhile, sipping and dreaming.
The rain lasted nearly two hours; but the sun was out again when Pere
Beret took leave of his young friend. They had been having another
good-natured quarrel over the novels, and Madame Roussillon had come
out on the veranda to join in.
"I've hidden every book of them," said Madame, a stout and swarthy
woman whose pearl-white teeth were her only mark of beauty. Her voice
indicated great stubbornness.
"Good, good, you have done your very duty, Madame," said Pere Beret,
with immense approval in his charming voice.
"But, Father, you said awhile ago that I should have my own way about
this," Alice spoke up with spirit; "and on the strength of that remark
of yours I gave you the pie and wine. You've eaten my pie and swigged
the wine, and now--"
Pere Beret put on his straw cap, adjusting it carefully over the
shining dome out of which had come so many thoughts of wisdom, kindness
and human sympathy. This done, he gently laid a hand on Alice's bright
crown of hair and said:
"Bless you, my child. I will pray to the Prince of Peace for you as