"Soon we shall not have to go to market, Val," remarked Harriott; "all that we need will be found in the boat. I wonder if it's a Customs' officer or a gendarme who is so kind?"
"I think a delicate attention on our part would be to tie a return bouquet on to the mainmast," said Val thoughtfully. "Should we go out and gather some, Harry--just to show that we enjoyed the figs?"
"Oh, no! Val," burst out Haidee, "you 'll spoil everything."
"Spoil?" said Val with wondering eyes. "Everything? Surely a little gratitude...? Old père Duval has some nice sunflowers."
But the girls had burst from the room in a rage. Val and Harriott, exploding with laughter, went for a walk down the digue in the mild darkness.
"Poor kids!" said Harriott. "Perhaps we really ought not to torment them so much."
"My dear, it is the proudest moment of their lives," laughed Val. "Their first conquest! At such times mothers are always looked upon as sort of ogresses anyway--we may as well be amused ogresses."
They had an adventure all to themselves that night. A little party of people passed them talking French, and bound like themselves for a stroll to the end of the breakwater. There were two ladies and two men, and in the latter Val felt certain she recognised the boys from Shai-poo. Behind them, at a little distance, smoking a deliciously fragrant cigar and humming cheerfully after the manner of a Frenchman who has just enjoyed a good dinner, strolled a third man, evidently belonging to the party, for he called out an occasional remark to the others. All disappeared into the blackness at the far end of the pier, where a lamp and storm-bell were built into a little chapel-shaped shelter. Val and Harriott, deciding not to walk farther, seated themselves by dint of a certain amount of physical exertion upon the high wall which runs beside the digue, their legs dangling, the sea below, the cool black night all round them. By and by the French party returned in the order of their going, the last man still lagging behind. He had perhaps lingered longer than the others to watch the seas dashing against the bulky end of the pier, for the advance party passed some five minutes before his cheerful humming was heard. As he came along a pale streak of gold from the far lighthouse swept over him, revealing him an elderly, distinguished man of the Légion d'honneur type. Val immediately recognised in him the man whom Haidee had pointed out as General Lorrain, the father of Sacha: he of the American boots and pointed goatee.
"Ah! Le phare est très chic ce soir!" He called out suddenly. He had seen them in the same sweeping line of light, but it never occurred to them that he mistook them for the ladies of his party until he came up and gave Harriott an affectionate squeeze on her ankle, repeating his remark:
"N'est ce pas, Comtesse--it gives a very chic illumination to-night, the lighthouse?"