"I thought you were going to say . . . that he was not killed after all," sobbed Anne.
"But we do not know, mon chéri, that he is killed, do we?" said the lady, whose own face was now much the paler of the two. "You see, Anne, he has perhaps gone back to his Chouans—to Grain d'Orge. You remember him, my child? Do you know, Anne, that I once rode on a horse behind Grain d'Orge?"
She beguiled him at last into submitting to be detached from his steed, and having his smeared countenance wiped with her fine cambric handkerchief (much pleasanter than Elspeth's towels), and finally, on the grass of the Square garden, she got him into her arms and kissed and comforted him.
(2)
All this time the broom of John Simms had been silent, and if he had heretofore stood and scratched his head and watched Anne-Hilarion at play, with how much more abandonment did he not now give himself to this occupation! So absorbed was he in the spectacle before him that he fairly jumped when he heard a fierce voice at his elbow, and perceived Mrs. Saunders, come to fetch her charge to the house, and, equally with him, amazed at what she saw.
"Wha's yon wumman?" she repeated. "What for did ye let her in here, John Simms?"
"I dunno who she is," responded he weakly. "She's furrin, that's all I know, and asked queer-like wheer the Markis dee Flavinny lived. So I tells her, and I says, 'This here's his little boy!'"
"Ye doited auld loon!" ejaculated Elspeth. "'Tis anither French witch, as A'm a sinner, come after the wean. John Simms"—she shook him by the arm—"gang till yon gate, and dinna stir frae it—she'll hae him awa gin ye dinna! A'll sort her!"
But though she advanced towards the unconscious little group upon the grass with that intention, she changed it en route. Glenauchtie should deal with this intruder.
"A'm gaein' for the maister," she announced, as she passed John Simms, who was slowly and reluctantly gravitating from his post of vantage to the gate, as he had been bidden. "Hasten noo, ye gaberlunzie!"