("What game is this they are playing?" thought the unseen listener.)
"Yes, that was the name. I liked Caen; it is a fine town, with many churches. But you know, Baptiste, I think the country of France round that place, Abbeville, not so pretty as England."
"And pray what do you know of Abbeville, little romancer?" interrupted his father, coming forward. "Or, for that matter, of any part of France?"
"M. le Marquis!" exclaimed Baptiste, jumping up from his stool.
"Papa!" screamed Anne-Hilarion, and was off the seat like a flash and had flung himself at him.
But, embraces over, and Baptiste discreetly vanished, de Flavigny repeated his question. "What do you know of France, baby?"
"But—a great deal!" responded Anne-Hilarion with dignity. "I have just been there—did Grandpapa not tell you? I went from the house of the little old ladies at Canterbury; a horrid man took me away in the middle of the night, but M. le Chevalier de la Vireville came after me, and he—well, I do not know what he did to that man, but we went away in the middle of the night again from Abbeville, and were in a ship, and a postchaise, and a small boat, and it was very cold, and a shot hit M. le Chevalier on the head, and we hid in a cave, and then we were in a forest in Brittany—there they wear such strange clothes, Papa—and then in another ship, and at Jersey, and after that——"
"Good God!" exclaimed the Marquis, rather pale. And he sat down in a chair with the traveller still in his arms. "Now tell me everything from the beginning, Anne, and not so fast. . . ."
M. de Flavigny heard it all again that evening from a narrator much more moved than the first had been—principal actor though that narrator was as well. Mr. Elphinstone was indeed so overcome with self-condemnation for having allowed himself to be duped, and the child to depart, that it was his son-in-law who had to comfort him. In the end the old gentleman registered a firm vow never to take any more French lads into his household from motives of charity.