“Oh, miss, you have just come? You have seen him so recently?”
“Only three days ago. He was looking much better, still a little pale as would be expected from one so long a patient in a hospital, but still doing very well, and soon able to go back to his regiment. You cannot believe what that letter from the young soldier, what is his name? did for him. He seems to have taken on new life, and I do not wonder, all these months without a word of his wife and daughter.”
“It was this way, you see: at first Paulette would not let me write because we were at such a pass, unhappy refugees. We were expecting every day to meet my grandfather and that everything then would be settled, but you see my grandfather never came. Does my father know about this? That we shall never see dear grandfather again?”
Miss Lowndes laid her hand caressingly on Lucie’s. “Yes, dear child, he knows; your friend told him in his letter.”
“That was kind, but it was like Victor to do it. He would know that it might be hard for me to tell my father.”
Miss Lowndes nodded. “I like that Victor. And so you did not write to your father at all?”
“Not at first, but after a while, but it seems he did not get the letter. Then we found that he had been moved to another hospital and did not know where to write. You see, mademoiselle, Miss I mean—”
Miss Lowndes smiled. “That isn’t the way we say it, dear. We would say Miss Lowndes, or just go on talking without saying Miss anything.”
“I am forgetting some of my English, I am afraid. You see, Miss Lowndes, Paulette, she is the old peasant woman who took care of me when I was a baby, and who has always lived with us. Paulette is so lost here in Paris, and I am a very ignorant little girl. Neither of us knew where to go to find out about things; Paulette would be afraid, anyway, for she has a great fear of governments and officials, and but for Victor I do not know when we should have heard about papa.”
“And who is this nice Victor person?”