CHAPTER XX
COMING AND GOING
“Pierre! and Angelique is boxing his ears! My, what a whack, that I can hear it way in here! I must to the rescue, but his coming makes right for me to go. Angelique, Angelique, don’t! Heigho, Pierre! I’m glad you’re back!”
But if he heard this welcome he did not heed it, and Margot stood amazed at the ridiculous scene upon which she had entered.
There was Angelique, still arrayed in her own flower-bedecked bonnet and her mistress’ India shawl, being whirled about the big kitchen in a crazy sort of waltz which seemed to suit the son’s excited mood. Her bonnet sat rakishly on one side and the rich shawl dragged over the floor, which, fortunately, was too clean to harm it; but amidst her enforced exercises, the mother continued to aim those resounding blows at her son’s great ears. Sometimes they hit the mark, but at others fell harmlessly upon his broad shoulders. In any case, they seemed not to disturb him but rather to add to the homelikeness of his return.
At length, however, he released his irate parent and held out his hand to Margot.
“Done the old lady heap of good. How’s things? How’s the menagerie? and the master?”
“Hey? Where’s the manners I’ve always taught you? Askin’ for the master last when ’tis he is always first. Yes. Yes, indeed. But, Pierre, ’twas nigh no master at all you came home to. He’s been at death’s door for weeks. Even yet——”
Then Angelique turned and saw Margot, whose presence she had not before observed. But she rallied instantly, turning her sentence into a brisk command: