of a spoiled child or chosen neophyte, he did not notice the silence and reserve of Blandine when the Count kept him to dinner, nor the strange looks which she darted at both of them when they conversed with warmth and excitement, rapt in a common lyric feeling and regardless of the presence of the witness.
The Zoudbertinge villagers did not, for an instant, look with jealous eyes at the special favour the Dykgrave accorded to the son of Govaertz.
As little as the Burgomaster and his daughter did they believe in the talent and the vocation of the youth.
"It's a real kindness and a charity," said they among themselves. "His father would not have known what to do with this wild and intractable young trifler, who used to despise the work as much as the amusements of the apprentices of his age."
The clowns even wondered that the Count had succeeded in getting the semblance of any work whatever out of the youth, who had learned nothing up to then, except to play tolerably well on the bugle.
Moreover, the dearer the master and pupil became to each other the more did Kehlmark
