Mademoiselle Duroc had taken no part in the conversation with Anne. Now she spoke: "Permit me to suggest that I prefer not to retain charge of a pupil that has the secrets and mysteries. Will madame be so good—"
"No, no, Mademoiselle Duroc!" interrupted Miss Drayton. "You will—you must—do us the favor to keep the child for the present, until my sister is stronger—until we are able to make other arrangements."
There was a pause. Then Mademoiselle said inquiringly, "These jewels, you will take charge of them?"
"No, oh, no!" said Miss Drayton, hastily. "Something may turn up—there may be some claimant—but she insists they are hers.—Oh, dear! oh, dear!—We will come back, Mademoiselle, when my sister is better and we will discuss the matter again."
But week after week passed without bringing the promised visit. Instead, Anne received kind but brief and worried notes from Miss Drayton, enclosing the weekly pocket money. Now and then, there was a picture post-card from Mrs. Patterson, with a loving message to Anne or two or three lines to Honey-Sweet. The invalid was not improving. In fact, she was growing worse. So the days wore on till February.
One crisp frosty morning found Mrs. Patterson lying on a couch beside her window. In the foreground was a park-like expanse with trees showing their graceful branching in exquisite tracery against the clear blue sky. Beyond lay Paris, its red and gray roofs showing among the bare trees, with domes, spires, and gilded crosses cresting the irregular line.
"The view here is beautiful, is it not?" said Miss Drayton.
Mrs. Patterson did not move her eyes from the horizon line. "I was thinking of home," she said. "How beautiful it is there these February mornings! Our noble rows of elms and oaks and maples! Up the avenue, the domes of the Capitol and the Library are shining against the gray or gold or rosy sky. And there is the monument pointing heavenward. Oh, the broad streets, the merry, busy throngs of our own people! I should like to see it all again. Sarah, let us go home. I want—to be there—my last days."
Miss Drayton's eyes filled with tears, but she kept her voice steady: "It shall be as you wish, sister. We will go home," she said.
Leaving Pat and Anne at school, they made the home-going voyage, and Mrs. Patterson spent her last weeks in her beloved homeland.