"
By this time we were at the gate. He stood leaning on his wheel a
moment, looking over the hedge.
"Live here with your daughter?" he asked.
I told him that I lived here alone with myself.
"Wasn't that your daughter I met?"
I didn't quite fall through the gate backwards. I am accustomed to
saying that I am old. I am not yet accustomed to have people notice it
when I do not call their attention to it. Amelie is only ten years
younger than I am, but she has got the figure and bearing of a girl.
The lad recovered himself at once, and said, "Why, of course not,--she
doesn't speak any English." I was glad that he didn't even apologize,
for I expect that I look fully a hundred and something. So with a
reiterated "Don't worry--you are all safe here now," he mounted his
wheel and rode up the hills.
I watched him making good time across to the route to Meaux. Then I came
into the house and lay down. I suddenly felt horribly weak. My house
had taken on a queer look to me. I suppose I had been, in a sort of
subconscious way, sure that it was doomed. As I lay on the couch in the
salon and looked round the room, it suddenly appeared to me like a thing
I had loved and lost and recovered--resurrected, in fact; a living thing
to which a miracle had happened.
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