"I am not too heavy?" he inquired rather anxiously, as he took a seat on La Vireville's legs. "Papa says I am getting too heavy for him."
And, as a matter of fact, he had planted himself exactly on one of the more painful souvenirs of the Ile de Houat; but La Vireville would not for worlds have asked him to move.
"You are a mere featherweight," he assured him. "And is your father nearly well again, Anne? He has written to me, but he did not say much about himself."
"Papa looks much better than you do, M. le Chevalier," said the little boy critically. "He can walk quite well now. He is coming to see you when he is quite better. Grandpapa is downstairs, you know; he will come up soon, I expect."
La Vireville, in his turn, surveyed the visitor perched on his body. Anne's legs, in their blue pantaloons, stuck out straight in front of him on the bed; the shoes at the end of them looked ridiculously small. His curls, falling on his deep ruffle, seemed heavier and a little longer than of yore, and the sun was busily employed in gilding them. For the first time, therefore, La Vireville was really conscious of the presence of that luminary.
Anne-Hilarion was the first to break the silence. "Did Papa tell you in his letter," he inquired, "that a lady came into the garden to ask for you, M. le Chevalier?"
"A lady!" exclaimed Fortuné. "What garden, child—here?"
"Oh no," replied Anne. "The garden in the Square at home. It is a long time ago now. I was there, and John Simms, and I had leaves in my cart—dead leaves—and she came in, all in black, and she asked if you had come back from France, and I said no, and then I cried, and I think she cried too, and she kissed me, and then Grandpapa came, and——"
"Stop a moment!" cried La Vireville, who was not without experience of the volume of detail Anne could pour forth when once he was embarked on the tide of narration. "What was the lady like? Was she young?"
"She was not so old as Elspeth," pronounced the Comte de Flavigny, after due thought.