122 STORIES FROM DAUDET

three little yellow heads who could be
heard chirping together in the next
room, like a nestful of drowsy fledge-
lings, she took her work and began to
sew outside on the garden seat. From
time to time she sighed thinking to
herself :

‘Yes, I know. They are cowards,
and renegades. . . . But all the same
their mothers are glad enough to see
them again.’

She recalls the time when her own
boy, before he went off to the army,
just about this end of the day too,
was working there in the garden. She
looks at the well where he filled his
water-pots, dressed in his blouse, with
his long hair, his beautiful long hair
which they cut off when he joined the
Zouaves. ...

Suddenly she trembles. The little
gate at the bottom, which opens on to
the meadows, has opened. The dogs
have not barked; yet the incomer
slouches against the walls like a thief,