"Ha, there, Jules! Thou lazy vagabond! Late again! Canst thou never
learn that I am not to be kept waiting?"
"But, Brossard," quavered the boy in his shrill, anxious voice, "it was
not my fault, indeed it was not. The goats were so stubborn to-night.
They broke through the hedge, and I had to chase them over
three fields."
"Have done with thy lying excuses," was the rough answer. "Thou shalt
have no supper to-night. Maybe an empty stomach will teach thee when my
commands fail. Hasten and drive the goats into the pen."
There was a scowl on Brossard's burly red face that made Jules's heart
bump up in his throat. Brossard was only the caretaker of the Ciseaux
place, but he had been there for twenty years,--so long that he felt
himself the master. The real master was in Algiers nearly all the time.
During his absence the great house was closed, excepting the kitchen and
two rooms above it. Of these Brossard had one and Henri the other.
Henri was the cook; a slow, stupid old man, not to be jogged out of
either his good-nature or his slow gait by anything that Brossard
might say.
Henri cooked and washed and mended, and hoed in the garden. Brossard
worked in the fields and shaved down the expenses of their living closer
and closer. All that was thus saved fell to his share, or he might not
have watched the expenses so carefully.
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