Original spellings have been standardised only when a dominant version was found.Misspellings of words that occur only once have been corrected. The cover was created by the transcriber and placed in the public domain.
CATHERINE’S COQUETRIES
A Tale of French Country Life
BY
CAMILLE DEBANS
TRANSLATED BY LEON MEAD
ILLUSTRATED
New York:
WM. L. ALLISON COMPANY,
Publishers.
Copyright, 1890, by
WORTHINGTON COMPANY.
[Page 3]
CATHERINE’S COQUETRIES.
A TALE OF FRENCH PEASANT LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
A GAME THAT ENDS BADLY.
“Bravo, Sidonie!”
“Ah, but he escapes her, the scamp!”
Thus shout the spectators as they watch a poor younglame girl chase, with all her energy, a young fellow oftwo and twenty, who makes all possible effort to eludeher.
Sidonie’s right hand clasps an important adjunct ofthe homely game—a little cluster of red raspberries. Inthe absorbed ardor of pursuit the “Little Crook,” asthey call her, holds it quite mechanically, and from hertightly clinched fingers trickle drops of the crimsonjuice as she runs.
“Good, little one, good,” cries the little old man, whois highly amused at the endeavors of the unfortunatelame girl.
Sidonie makes a fresh start—this time determined tocatch the fugitive. The aspect of the afflicted girl asshe hobbles about on limbs of unequal length does not[Page 4]engender among these peasants any particular feelingof compassion. None of her companions ever dreamedof offering her pity. She perfectly enjoys the game.She would be utterly astounded and piqued if any onemanifested an open sympathy on account of her deformity.With that great endurance so natural amonghardy peasants, and often so inexplicable to the city bornand bred, she pursues the young man. After runningin a straight line a short distance, he suddenly changeshis tactics. A tree—several for that matter, but one inparticular—stands near by. He runs behind it and awaitsSidonie, his hands clasping the trunk. Reaching thetree she fully expects to seize him. But he pretendsto go to the right, and as she confidently advances hemakes for another tree to the left, and so the game isprolonged. And the brave girl, always smiling, continuesthe pursuit, until at length Bruno, the youngpeasant, slips and falls upon the sward, and before he canrecover himself, Sidonie holds him down and daubs hisface over and over again with the juice of her crushedraspberries.
Everybody approaches to congratulate “Little Crook,”who laughs in glee at her triumph. Her good-naturedadversary joins in the ensui