He had paused for a moment, I standing still beside him, and had then gone on, the words coming slowly, like the dropping of water:
"You remember Monsieur Herbert's story, do you not, of the old mould-maker who lost his daughter, and who died in his chair, his clay masks grinning down at him from the skylight above? Well, I am he. Just as they grinned at the old mould-maker, his daughter gone, so in my loneliness will my figures grin at me."
What the dull winter had been to him I never knew, but he had not gone back on his word, and now that the apple-blossoms were in bloom, and the orchards a blaze of glory, the wedding day, just as he had promised, had arrived!
No wonder, then, Coco is screaming at the top of his voice; no wonder the court-yard is swept by a whirlwind of flying feet; no wonder the upstairs chamber door, with Leà as guardian angel, is opened and shut every few minutes, hiding the girl behind it; and no wonder that Herbert's impatient car, every spoke in its wheels trembling with excitement, is puffing with eagerness to make the run to the old apple-tree in the outer lot, and so on to the church, loaded to its extra tires with a carpet of blossoms for Mignon's pretty feet.
No wonder, either, that before Herbert's car, with Louis in charge of the blossom raid, had cleared the back gate, there had puffed in another motor--two this time--Le Blanc in one, with his friend, The Architect, beside him, the seats packed full of children, their faces scrubbed to a phenomenal cleanliness, their hair skewered with gay ribbons, all their best clothes on their backs; madame la marquise and Marc in the other, an old weather-beaten fisherman--an uncle of Gaston's, too lame to walk--beside her, and bundled up on the back seat two lean withered fishwomen in black bombazine and close-fitting white caps--a cousin and an aunt of the groom--the first time any one of the three had ever stepped foot in a car.
As madame and her strange crew entered the court, I turned instinctively to Lemois, wondering how he would deport himself when the crucial moment arrived--and a car-load of relatives certainly seemed to express that fatality--but he was equal to the occasion.
"Ah, madame!" he said in his courtliest manner, his hand over his heart, "who else in the wide world would have thought of so kindly an act? These poor people will bless you to their dying day. And it is delightful to see you again, Monsieur Marc. You have, I know, come to help madame in her good works. As I have so often told her, she is----"