him, did not refrain from telling him their whim, all the while pretending to joke, and barbing with a covetous glance the joke that they cast at him.
The line being unimportant, he filled the offices of crossing-keeper and switchman. The upkeep of his little station kept him as busy as though he were a simple workman in a gang. The flighty girls invariably found him busy. Deaf to their lures, perhaps a little proud, and judging them to be too free and too trivial, he worked harder than ever, and when he had finished blowing his horn, presenting, unfurling and planting his flag, opening and closing the crossing-gate, he hurried to fill his wheelbarrow with sand, reballast the tracks, and oil his switch.
The white-capped lady's maid did not allow herself to be rebuffed by his disdainful and bizarre manner. Prettier and of a better type than the girls of the quarter, at the same time more discreet and more alluring, she gently tamed the savage. He began to straighten up when he was bending over, working on the tracks, and slowly lifting his cap in answer to her greeting; the following week he came over to her, blushing and somewhat foolish, to talk about the rain; the next time, leaning upon the gate, he told her cock-and-bull stories, which she swallowed as though they were words of the gospel. One would have said that in order to plague them the blustering trains ran by in greater numbers on that day. But she waited until the young man had finished his many drudging tasks, followed his movements, won by his graceful carriage, and they took up the interrupted conversation … The gradual union of these two simple people greatly amused Laurent Paridael, conquered as he had
