"Eh?" ejaculated the seaman, and a gleam of speculation shot suddenly into his blue eyes. La Vireville felt as if he were sitting on a red-hot chair. He and the child between them had been a little unfortunate, with the Supreme Being on the one hand and that forbidden term of social address on the other—returning to use though it was among the upper classes.
The captain, however, merely shook his head.
"You seem old-fashioned, my boy," he remarked drily, and, rising, went to the door and called to the mate.
Some three-quarters of an hour later the Trois Frères was warping slowly out of the basin, and La Vireville, immense relief in his heart, and the hungry Anne-Hilarion on his knee, was giving the child, as they awaited breakfast, a further lesson in the things that he was not to say.
CHAPTER X
Happenings in a Postchaise
(1)
Anne-Hilarion was sorry to say good-bye to the Trois Frères at Caen, and all the way up the river from the little port at Ouistreham he sat quietly on deck with a pensive expression. That the vessel's speed at sea had not been very noticeably greater than that with which she now approached the spires of the town distressed him not at all. Everything about her had been delightful, from her dolphin figurehead to her old-fashioned poop, and he only regretted that M. le Chevalier had not allowed him to chatter to her crew as much as he desired.
La Vireville too owed the old barque gratitude. Whether her master really believed his story or no, he had kept to his contract, and asked few supplementary questions. It had been a fine breezy morning when the émigré stood on her deck as she lumbered along the coast towards Dieppe, and looked up at the tricolour beating at the mizen, reflecting that it was the first time he had ever sailed beneath this parvenu flag of his country. Two or three miles out at sea a couple of frigates were visible, the rearguard of the Brest fleet. Against those vessels that flag was their talisman. But he had not looked at it with love for all that.