“But this you know could not be,” Lucie assured her. “Wait till I have told you. I asked my mother to suggest something from her books which would be interesting to both you and me and she gave me this which she tells me is quite unlike any of the others of this Dickens. It is called ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and is about the French Revolution. The heroine has my own name of Lucie. My mother says the story is exciting beyond words.”
“Voila une autre chose,” returned Annette, accepting the situation without further protest. “Let us then proceed.”
Usually Lucie’s methods of translation were very free, to say the least. Her way was to skim over a page as rapidly as possible, then relate the contents in her own words. Anything that appeared uninteresting she skipped, consequently the abridged tale which Annette heard was shorn of many of its features and she was frequently bewildered in trying to keep track of the plot and the characters. If she complained of this Lucie would laboriously try to translate literally, which was more bewildering still. Both girls, however, enjoyed such translations as Lucie took pains to make clear. The usual manner would run something like this, Lucie turning over the leaves rapidly:
“It was in the year 1775. There was a man in a coach who had a message brought to him. He was to meet a young lady at Dover.”
“A young man was this?” Annette queried.
“No, an old. He was a banker or something. He had to tell the young lady that her father was living.”
“Didn’t she want him to be living?”
“That I do not know yet, but anyway she thought him dead. He had been in prison for eighteen years.”
“Ma foi, Lucie, for what was he imprisoned? He must have been a very bad man. Eighteen years! A lifetime.”
“It doesn’t say why he was imprisoned. He may not have been a wicked person. Anyway they went to see him. He was in a tower making shoes.”