“What did you tell him?” asked Gerard.
“I said only that you were my step-father’s son and that I was not born in Rouen.”
Gerard laughed. “Discreet little Alainette. Come and tell Papa Louis; it will amuse him. Do you know it is over two years, Alaine, since we left England, and more than a year since we came away from Martinique?”
“Those long journeys, how I remember them with horror, Gerard! Two years ago I was Alaine Hervieu and you were Gerard Legrand; to-day we are both children of the same parents and of the name of Mercier.”
“Than whom no better parents exist. For our sakes, Alaine, what have they not done?”
“So, my children, what gives you so grave an aspect?” inquired Papa Louis, as they approached the spot where he and his wife were waiting for them that they might continue their homeward way.
“We were talking of you, Papa Louis,” retorted Alaine, with a flash of mischief in her eyes.
“And so you were grave,” he laughed. “Enough, indeed, am I for gravity, as Michelle says when I tramp with muddied feet upon her clean floor, or when I do not praise her cooking in fine enough terms. The good Michelle, to stand a mulish husband who is so obstinate not to see the virtue of neatness. A year and more married and no improvement; no wonder you are serious, Alaine.”
“My life, but you invent mockeries, Louis,” said Michelle. “Who was the young man to whom you were talking, my daughter?”
“M. Dupont, from Rouen,” she returned, calmly.