“Yes, Grandfather,” replied Philippe from the top of a churn where he had climbed to look out of the small window at the river. “It is falling so hard that the raindrops are bouncing from the surface of the water.” Remembering what his Grandmother had told him, he added, “It will make the river flow along more happily than it has for a long time, and that will be very beautiful!”
“Horrible!” said Grandfather with a sigh that was almost too soft to be heard. “It makes me feel weak clear through,” he continued. “Give me the sharp cold and the sparkling frost when the river freezes so hard that it cracks and roars like a cannon. When I was a boy, I used to spread my cape and let the wind push me across the slippery ice—— This soft weather will be the end of me!”
There were three people living in the house that Philippe visited; besides Grandmother and Grandfather, there was little Avril, their grandniece, and therefore Philippe’s cousin. Avril was a child of tender beauty, younger than Philippe, quite a baby in the sight of eyes that were eight long years old. Avril was very shy, so shy that she had hidden under the table when Philippe had entered the door, and it was not until he had paid his respects to Grandmother and Grandfather that he saw her there, peeking out at him like a flower from the dark shadow of a garden wall. “Hello, my little cousin,” said Philippe with a grand and grown-up air. “Would you like to play a very important game with me that I have just thought of?”
Avril laughed her pleasure.
It was a most excellent game, so Philippe thought. He was King, enthroned on the churn, and Avril was his slave, and had to bring him anything he might request, with the penalty of having her head chopped off if she failed. King Philippe had just commanded the brightest star in the heavens to be brought him, when there was all at once a loud rapping and rattling of the wooden latch. The door flew open before anyone had time to answer, and a gust of chilly wind swept through the room, breaking the weaving rings of smoke, making the fire leap up the chimney, causing Grandmother in her excitement to drop the wooden spoon into the pudding, and even waving Grandfather’s beard like a white flag.
“Behold! I am here!” cried Uncle Pablôt from the threshold, withdrawing his right arm from the voluminous folds of his cape and making a magnificent sweeping gesture ending with his fingertips being pressed lightly against his expanded chest.
“So I see,” said Grandfather in a thin, complaining voice from his dark corner. “Close the door,” he pleaded, tucking the end of his waving beard into his blue smock. “Close the door—the rain makes me feel very weak——”
But no one paid the least bit of attention to him. Grandmother ran forward with squeaking noises of delight, throwing her arms around the newcomer, draping him with a link of sausage, which she had forgotten to put down in her hurry, in the manner of a necklace. Avril shyly retreated beneath the table again, and Philippe tried desperately to remember the pretty sentences with which he was to address the great man. He was in the very middle of trying to remember when his Grandmother took him by the hand.
“And here is your little nephew,” said Grandmother, “who has come all by himself a great distance to welcome you.”
Philippe stared dumbly, wishing that he had had the presence of mind to slip under the table with Avril.