“I can save you the trouble,” said she.
“Ah, but my instructions! my instructions!” cried the military pedant, and ran off into the house, and left Josephine “planted there,” as they say in France.
Raynal demanded a private interview of the baroness so significantly and unceremoniously that Rose had no alternative but to retire, but not without a glance of defiance at the bear. She ran straight, without her bonnet, into the Pleasaunce to slake her curiosity at Josephine. That young lady was walking pensively, but turned at sight of Rose, and the sisters came together with a clash of tongues.
“O Rose! he has”—
“Oh!”
So nimbly does the female mind run on its little beaten tracks, that it took no more than those syllables for even these innocent young women to communicate that Raynal had popped.
Josephine apologized for this weakness in a hero. “It wasn’t his fault,” said she. “It is your Edouard who set him to do it.”
“My Edouard? Don’t talk in that horrid way: I have no Edouard. You said ‘no’ of course.”
“Something of the kind.”
“What, did you not say ‘no’ plump?”