The little pocket gaped, and the man succumbed to temptation. Very gingerly he dropped a crown piece into the opening which displayed the drenched handkerchief. Then he stood up. “I’m going by the afternoon train,” he said, “so I fear I must say good-bye. But I hope we shall meet again some day.”
“I hope so,” sighed Winny, as she held up her face to be kissed, and wondered why he seemed in such a hurry and never even asked her to walk back with him.
I would have our children taught, so far as teaching can go, to love and admire France, that glorious nation which has done so much and suffered so much for humanity.--WILLIAM ARCHER, 1898.
We did not believe it possible that a boy of nine could wear high-buttoned boots, a pale blue sash, and long hair like a girl’s, and yet possess a character unaffected by these deplorable externals. That, in addition to this, he should be French, speaking that “_nimini pimini_” language with perfect ease; and, in further proof of his mental slipperiness, speak English almost equally well--but for a curious roll and rumble of the letter “r” in the back of the throat--was another serious stumbling-block in the way of our liking. It was not natural. Had he been puny, or sallow, or in any way physically “Frenchy” as we supposed it, we should have found him less bewildering. But he was sturdy, ruddy, and fair-haired; tall for his age, and of a frank cheerfulness that was rather engaging. Absolutely unashamed of his inferior nationality, unconscious, seemingly, of those elongated buttoned boots, he would shake back his tawny hair and look you squarely in the face with big blue eyes that smiled. He didn’t look a “Molly,” somehow, in spite of his hair; but we children were convinced that he “must be one, really,” and that what the twins called his “false French smile” was a sort of cloak for the innate cowardice of his disposition.
What induced Aunt Alice to marry a French officer, we could not think! That she and her husband were what mother called “devoted to one another” seemed to us an insufficient explanation. Not only did she marry this foreigner and desert her native land, but she became a Roman Catholic--nurse minded this most and called her a Papist--and she seemed perfectly happy in her exile. She was supposed to be a very beautiful person, but what most impressed us during her rare and brief visits was the quality and quantity of the sweets she brought us; sweets in gorgeous boxes which bore the mystic device _Gouache_. France was, we were convinced, a poor sort of place, but exception must be made in favor of her sweets.