"Oh, monsieur," she said, "how good of you!"
And she looked at her husband as if to ask him how far she might enter into a conversation of this nature with a stranger.
He smiled, and held out his hand, and with one quick glance gave his wife leave to do what she liked.
"Yes," he said, "be so good as to take my dear Pauline's last farewell messages to her family; and tell her mother especially, if you see her, that in less than three years' time we will come back and pay her a visit."
"Three years!" murmured the young wife dubiously.
"And tell this foolish child, monsieur," he went on, kissing his wife's forehead, "that it is easier to get to and from Guadeloupe now than it was in old days to get to Saint-Cloud.... I am not yet thirty, and I have already made a dozen voyages between Pointe-à-Pître and Nantes."
"Yes, my dear! You tell me that now, but eighteen hundred leagues is a long way!"
"Six weeks' voyage ... that isn't much surely?"
I pointed out to the young wife a swallow which was skimming about the masts.
"That bird takes just such a voyage twice a year, madame," I said to her, "guided by its instinct alone."