Very often indeed, when he felt incompetent to do for his child all that he wished--philosophers are often stupid in human affairs--he thought it was a blessing Zoe had a friend like M.Fille.
Since the terrible day when he found that his wife had gone from him--not with the master-carpenter who only made his exit from Laplatte some years afterwards--he had had no desire to have a woman at the Manor to fill her place, even as housekeeper.

He had never swerved from that.

He had had a hard row to hoe, but he had hoed it with a will not affected by domestic accidents or inconveniences.

The one woman from outside whom he permitted to go and come at will--and she did not come often, because she and M.Fille agreed it would be best not to do so--was the sister of the Cure.

To be sure there was Seraphe Corniche, the old cook, but she was buried in her kitchen, and Jean Jacques treated her like a man.
When Zoe was confirmed, and had come back from Montreal, having spent two years in a convent there--the only time she had been away from her father in seven years--having had her education chiefly from a Catholic "brother," the situation developed in a new way.