“Morbleu,” murmured Louis as he followed him, “you are horribly magnanimous. I could support reproaches better. It was really very careless of me.”
“You are new to your rôle—except, perhaps, to one part of it,” returned his cousin impassively. “But remember not to address me as an equal in public.”
Passing over to the driver, as lightly as he could, the fact that he intended continuing his journey without his baggage, Gilbert mounted into the diligence, which contained only a farmer and his wife and an insignificant-looking man who was probably a small shopkeeper. But in its progress through Verneuil the vehicle further gathered up, from the door of a comfortable-looking house in a main street, a cheerful little old man with apple cheeks and horn-rimmed spectacles, who skipped in, bearing under one arm a large and rotund object done up in newspaper. The two pretty girls who were seeing him off handed in to him two cabbages of great size, a basket which might be presumed to contain onions, and a bunch of flowers. These the old man, amid the laughter of the girls and his own brisk apologies, bestowed beside him. He waved his hand as the diligence lumbered off and then, pulling a book from his pocket, was instantly immersed.
The shopkeeper got out at a village a mile or two from Verneuil, the farmer and his wife at a wayside farm, and having nothing better to do—for he dared not encourage Louis’ possibly unguarded conversation—the Marquis fell to examining their fellow-passenger. In spite of his horticultural impedimenta the latter had not in the least the air of a farmer; the hand which held the book close to his short-sighted eyes was thin and pale, though the nails and finger-tips were a little discoloured; and the book itself, as Gilbert could easily see, was the Georgics of Virgil. Had not the road, after crossing the Avre, become very bad his curiosity—such as it was—might have remained unsatisfied, but a violent jolt suddenly causing one of the cabbages to leap headlong to the floor, the Marquis, who sat directly opposite, picked it up and returned it to its owner.
The old man hurriedly put down his book. “A thousand thanks, Citizen,” he murmured, receiving it in careful hands. “You are too kind.” But he was plainly more concerned with the fact that one of two of the vegetable’s outer leaves were damaged than that a stranger had been at the trouble of stooping for it, as, smoothing them as one might the plumage of a bird, he restored it to its place. Hardly, however, had he resumed his study of the classics, before the paper-clad object, falling with a portentous thud, rolled under Gilbert’s legs.
This time there was real commotion, and Louis, who had removed himself to a further corner, shook with stifled mirth as his cousin and the old man made simultaneous dives under the seat. Its wrappings having come off in the transit, it was plainly a large pumpkin with which the latter finally emerged.
“You are very good, citizen,” he exclaimed, as the Marquis’ head and his own narrowly escaped collision. “I am deeply ashamed to have inconvenienced you with my poor pumpkin.” He regarded the erring vegetable with a mixture of pride and sorrow, for it had suffered in its fall.
“The citizen is a very successful gardener,” hazarded Gilbert, also looking at it.
“Gardening is my passion,” returned the old man fervently. And he went off into a tolerably long panegyric of the occupation, concluding by saying: “But I weary you, citizen, for you have not the air of one interested in agricultural pursuits.”
“On the contrary,” replied the Marquis, “I am deeply concerned in them.” And with guarded allusions to a small estate, he spoke, for the sake of being agreeable, of English methods, and how far they might be pursued in France, while Louis gazed from each window in turn at the distant woods of Le Perche and La Ferté-Vidame.