II
THE STONE MILL
On his second visit and on those which followed, when vacations sent him home to his guardians, Laurent found himself no more acclimated than he had been on the first day. Each time he seemed to fall in upon them from the moon and take up space.
They did not wait until he had put down his satchel to find out the length of his stay, and they were more anxious about the state of his clothes than they were about himself. A welcome utterly without effusion: Cousin Lydia mechanically offered him her lemon-like cheek, Gina appeared to have forgotten him since the last time, and as for Cousin William, he did not expect to be disturbed at his business for so small a matter as the arrival of a young rapscallion whom he would see soon enough at the next meal.
"Ah! So there you are, eh? Have you been good? Have you improved in your studies?"
Always the same questions, asked with an air of doubt, never of encouragement. If Laurent brought home a prize it was ever his bad luck that it was one of those to which Monsieur Dobouziez attached no importance.
At the table, the round eyes of Cousin Lydia, implac-
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