"
"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.
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