“No you couldn’t; it’s French, and I understand French just as well as you do,” was the ungracious answer.
“Oh, is it? Well, perhaps if we should put our heads together we might be able to decipher it; for,” he added, truthfully enough, “I’ve taken a great interest in French lately, and studied it tremendously. But, say, how did French get into that bottle?”
“Let me alone; I understand French;” Marmaduke growled, becoming more and more bewildered. But at last, after ten minutes’ unceasing study of the letter, he turned so dizzy that he was fain to give it up in despair. “Here, read it, if you can,” he said, handing it to Charles. “All I can make out is that it speaks of nobles, and steamboats, and castles, and anchors, and priests, and sailors, and an English king’s yacht, and America, and pumpers, and—and—castles, and—and General Somebody—.”
Charles had made himself tolerably familiar with the letter, but he could not yet read it very readily. However, his memory served him well, and he managed to get the main points. But after all the time and learning Henry had squandered on the letter, it was too bad that it should be “murdered” thus. Marmaduke listened eagerly, too much absorbed to wonder how it was that Charles could read so much better than he. As for the other auditors, to all appearance they were at first more startled than even Marmaduke.
“Well, boys,” said he, as Charles folded the letter, and wriggled uneasily in his damp clothes, “well, boys, you jeered at me about the bones, but at last we have stumbled upon romance! Here is something mysterious!
“Boys, let us solve the mystery! If we were only gallant knights of old, what glorious deeds we should perform!”
The speaker strutted up and down as pompously as a schoolboy can, while the plotters exchanged villainous winks, and glanced eloquently at the boy in the tree.
“Read that again!” was the command, and Charles dutifully obeyed, the dupe listening as eagerly as at first. The others made no remarks, but endeavoured to look grave and horror-stricken, while the master-plotter overhead was highly entertained.
“Oh, the monstrous villain! How durst he steal away a French noble’s daughter?” Marmaduke exclaimed vehemently. “And she, the heroine, how bravely she endures her lot! What a heroine!”
“Well, what shall we do about it?” Will asked, anxious that Marmaduke himself should propose going to the rescue. Foolish plotters! they supposed he would strike in with their views without any demur!