“Yes, yes. It’s very good. You will learn fast.”
At these words, the girl, who with the same sullen, aloof, and shamed look had walked on ahead of her parents, now turned and cried out in a furious and exasperated tone:
“I tell you, the gentleman knows all that!… Will you leave him alone now?… You are only making a fool of yourself!”
But the old man and old woman paid no attention to her, but stood looking at the young man, with a friendly smile, and shook hands warmly and cordially with him as he said good-bye.
Then he walked on across the tracks and got up into a compartment in the other train. When he looked out of the window again, the peasant and his wife were standing on the platform looking towards him with kind and eager looks on their old faces. When the peasant caught his eye, he pointed his great finger at the sun again, and called out:
“Le so-leil.”
“Le so-leil,” the young man answered.
“Yes! Yes!” the old man shouted, with a laugh. “It’s very good.”
Then the daughter looked toward the young man sullenly, gave a short and impatient laugh of exasperation, and turned angrily away. The train began to move then, but the old man and woman stood looking after him as long as they could. He waved to them, and the old man waved his great hand vigorously and, laughing, pointed towards the sun. And the young man nodded his head and shouted, to show that he had understood. Meanwhile, the girl had turned her back angrily and was walking away around the station.
Then they were lost from sight, the train swiftly left the little town behind, and now there was nothing but the fields, the earth, the smoky and mysterious distances. The rain fell steadily.
XCI
Full dark had come—the wintry darkness of a grey wet day in early March—before he got to Orléans. The train was of the variety known in France as omnibus, one of those dingy little locals that are made up of third-class compartments and that stop at every country station. As the train neared Orléans there was a noticeable increase in the travelling public: at every station there was a noisy traffic of arriving and departing passengers. For the most part the people had the look of the country: they came stamping in and out with muddy shoes, with a great banging
