"Willingly," he answered, "if I can serve you."
"That you greatly can. Stay in your room till I have made mine comfortable, and then I will call you, I am so much obliged to you, it will help me greatly, for a child is an embarras sometimes, and I like working and talking—'tis very kind of you."
She had a talent for making the obliged seem her creditors, and thus placing them at perfect ease. So hurrying back to her room, Miles was laid on his accustomed place, a pillow on the floor; lest he should fall off, she seldom placed him on her bed. And then an Asmodeus might have seen Minnie—the fair and gentle—the one on whom the winds of heaven were once almost chidden, if they blew coldly—on her knees, lighting the stove in her room, for she soon found a match; the search for one was an excuse, and her face looked glad—that lip forgot its sadness—she was doing angels' work—charity. In an incredibly short space of time the room looked cheerful—the door of the stove was left open—the wood crackled in it—the glare lighted the humble garret. She drew the old, but clean curtain before the window—lit her lamp—placed her second chair (she had but two) and then she summoned her shivering guest.
"Stay," she cried, as he seated himself, springing up herself; "I have forgotten my bouillotte;" (we cannot call it kettle—it had no resemblance to such a thing; neither can we translate the word, to give any idea of that queer, tin sort of jug, which rattles as if it had marbles in its head, and which is pushed into hot ashes to boil.) "I have forgotten my bouillotte," cried she; "and what should I do without a cup of tea? Do you like tea, monsieur?"
"Yes, madame," he answered, faintly smiling; "but I have not taken any for some time."
"Then we will have a cup together. Are you not English?" she asked, pausing in her arrangement of the bouillotte in the stove; and as she knelt on one knee to do so, she rested the tips of her white fingers (even still) on the floor, to support herself, and looked up in his face like a child. She looked like a picture thus; for the pale face was glowing with pleasure at her good deed, and the close neat little grisette cap concealing all that fair hair, except the braids on her forehead; she looked so innocent and pure, the old man bent his eyes upon that upturned face, and like a father, placing a hand on her shoulder, said in perfect English, though with a slightly foreign accent—
"I have lived much among English, and been in England; but that is long ago. I am a Swiss by birth."
"Oh!" she burst forth in English, "I am so happy to meet some one who speaks my own tongue, it has been a stranger to me so long a time; let us converse always in it: the sound has been lost to me. I have been teaching my child to speak his first word in my native tongue."
"What is your boy's name?" he asked, deeply interested in this fair young mother.
She hesitated a moment. In christening him he had been named "William," as second name, after her father, and by this she generally now called him to strangers; his father's might lead somehow to detection, for frequently the concièrge took him in her arms for a walk, when she was too busy to leave home, and always returned with an account of the many persons who stopped to inquire the boy's name. As William, or Guillaume Deval, who might recognize the parents? Almost an impulse induced her to give him Miles's name when this other inquired; but, checking herself, she said "William."