“There will be more than that, I fancy. There has been destruction, of course, but I have asked and I am told that our little town has not been so hardly dealt with as some others.”
“If you go, then I go, too.”
“You will be better off here, more comfortable.”
“I do not care for that. I want to be there to help resurrect our home and be on the spot when my mother comes. She will come, Paulette, she will, she will. Odette believes it and what Odette believes generally happens.”
Paulette struck her hoe into the brown mold several times before she answered with a little twist of a smile: “Even Odette may not be counted upon as infallible.”
“But you admit she is generally right.”
“Generally, yes, generally, but not always.”
Lucie pondered on this truth rather mournfully, before she said, with a sigh: “If one must lose faith, Paulette, one may as well give up and die.”
“Very true, chérie. Keep your faith. I only wish to prepare you for the worst if it should come.”
Lucie shook her head. “No, I shall continue to follow Odette’s philosophy. One can never be prepared for the worst. If it comes, it is no harder a blow than if one expected it; if it does not come, one will then not have wasted time in grieving.”