“Yes.”
“Oh, how mean of you! How long?”
“I can’t tell.”
Her lips to the keyhole, she heaved an ostentatious sigh. The sigh brought forth no sign of relenting.
“I am very lonesome, daddy,” she said then. “It is too bad of you to neglect me like this. But, if you really won’t let me in, I’m going out on the ramparts for a breath of fresh air.”
“Well,” the doctor’s accent bespoke his manifest relief. “Go on, dear; but don’t get blown away.”
“No; and don’t you fall asleep over your horrid old manuscripts, and forget to let yourself out and come down to supper,” she cautioned him. “Good by.”
Going back to her room, she took off her jacket and broad hat, and replaced them with a sealskin coat and toque. Then she went running down the stairs and turned out into Sainte Anne Street, already powdered thickly with falling flakes.
With the coming of the snow, the wind was dying, and Nancy made her way easily enough around the corner into Buade Street, past the Chien d’Or, gnawing his perennial bone high in the air, and out to the northeast corner of the city wall where she halted, breathless, beside one of the venerable guns.
Just then, the door of the doctor’s room opened, and Adolphe St. Jacques stepped out into the hall.