“Yes, that is it. He wishes that we be married at once so that I can go back with him to Paris and spend the rest of his leave with him there. He has affairs to look after in Paris, you see, and cannot stay here for long.”
“And what is this at once?” asked Lucie, suddenly feeling very much grown up.
“Day after to-morrow,” replied Annette soberly. “He has six weeks leave, which gives him about a month in Paris.”
“And then you will come back here?”
“Oh, yes, to wait till the war is over and he returns to take up his life here at Coin-du-Pres, which will be my home forevermore, I suppose.”
“You like the idea? You would rather that than to go back to your old home next door to us?”
Annette shook her head. “That old home is no more. From what we have heard there is little to go back to. One must accept such things and be content.”
Lucie sighed. “I shall never be content till I get back there, even if there be not a tree nor a shrub left. It has been very wonderful that I could be with you here, and particularly now, but I could not stay during that forevermore, for I shall some day have my own home with my own parents, you see. It would be very queer, however, if I were not on hand to see you married. You are eighteen, and in another year I shall be that age, but it seems to me that it will be a long, a very long time before I shall be thinking of marriage. Just consider, Annette, it is probable that I have never seen the man I shall marry. I wonder what he is like. Perhaps I shall never marry at all. It is very likely to be that way, and I shall be perfectly satisfied, for with my father and mother whom else should I wish? unless it be my friend, Madame Gaspard Guerin. How funny that sounds.”
Annette, who had picked up her work again and was setting swift stitches, smiled as she repeated the name softly.
“It may not sound so strange to you,” Lucie chattered on, “for the name has always been familiar, but consider, Annette, what it may mean to me to have a perfectly strange name suddenly thrust upon me.”