The captain laughed aloud.
Julien opened the inner door.
“Didst thou call, sister?”
“Oui, mon frere. Tell me who is with thee? But I know it—I! It is oncle le capitaine! I heard him laugh!”
“Bonjour, bonjour, mademoiselle l’Empress! how is your Majesty’s health to-day?” cried a voice over Julien’s shoulder. “See, little pale one, I come to bring thee thy cross.”
“Oh, the cross of mamma! the cross of mamma!” exclaimed Julie, seizing it and covering it with kisses, while silent tears crept down her wan cheeks.
Julien turned away to the window, and the captain sat down by the couch and shaded his eyes with his hand.
“But, mon oncle,” said Julie after awhile, “tell me, did you have a good voyage? Did the great waves come and tip the ship right over on its side and almost spill you out? You were gone so long I feared you were drowned. Oh, mon oncle, do not go away again upon the terrible sea; but stay with us, my brother and me.”
“Ah, my little Julie, thy poor old uncle is, upon land, like a fish out of water.”
Julie must not yet hear, the captain thought, the story of that great gale off the coast of the Carolinas, in which his good ship had nearly been wrecked. It would better suit the little convalescent to be told of those islands where he had been; those sunny islands where it is always summer, where oranges and bananas and the rarest and most beautiful flowers grow wild.